Catharine E. Brewer (b. Courtright) (1838-1932) was born in Plains, Pennsylvania, and died in Owego, New York. In 1857 she married Reigart B. Lowry. He was a commodore in the United States Navy, serving in both the Mexican-American War and in the American Civil War. He then commanded a training ship in the North Atlantic Squadron and a naval station in New London, Connecticut. The couple divorced, and in 1882 she married Eben W. Brewer in Erie, Pennsylvania. He owned and operated the Erie Dispatch newspaper from 1874 to 1895. In the early 1890s they lived in Chicago, Illinois, and in about 1896 they moved to Washington, D.C., where Brewer's husband became a United States Military Postal Agent. He died while on a work assignment in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, in 1898, and sometime thereafter Brewer relocated to Owego. She became interested in Christian Science in 1887 and studied with Mary Baker Eddy's student Augusta E. Stetson in 1889. She joined The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 5, 1895. She was also a member of First Church of Christ, Scientist, in New York, New York.

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