Born: 30 April 1868, United Kingdom
Died: 29 May 1951
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Catherine Mary McEwen
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Deirdre Bryan. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Preston, Katherine Mary (1868–1951), educator and principal of Alexandra College, Dublin, was born Catherine [sic] Mary McEwen on 30 April 1868 in Garvock, Scotland, elder of two daughters of Thomas McEwen, parochial schoolmaster at Baldernock, and Eliza Gray McEwen (née Mann). After her mother died when Katherine was a child, she and her younger sister, Euphemia, moved to Dublin to live with their aunt, Mrs Stride. Katherine was educated at Alexandra College (1882–9), and then obtained an honours MA degree in modern languages from the RUI (1891). She worked as a lecturer in Alexandra College 1891–5.
In 1895 she married Thomas Preston, professor of natural philosophy at UCD; they had two sons, George, and one who died in infancy, and one daughter, Kathleen. When she was widowed in 1900, she returned to lecture at Alexandra College, while her aunt took over running their household at Bardowie, 16 Orwell Park, Rathgar. She served as the assistant to the principal, Dr Henrietta White, from 1901 until White’s retirement in 1932, when – reluctantly – Preston assumed the position of principal. Her eight-year tenure was uneventful, yet successful in that it consolidated the tremendous growth that had occurred under White, and fostered a strong ethos during a difficult economic and political period. She was known affectionately by her students as ‘Ma P.’, and when she retired in 1940, she was remembered for her calm and tact.
She died 29 May 1951 of heart failure, with her son George, a professor at Dundee University, at her bedside in Orwell Park. Her sister, Euphemia, predeceased her in 1922, as did her daughter, Kathleen Warren, in 1947, when she died in an air crash in Croydon while returning to Uganda after a visit to her mother. Her portrait, painted in 1941 by Leo Whelan, RHA, hangs in Alexandra College, Milltown, Dublin.