Katherine Blount Skinner Lassiter (1826–1903) came from Perquimans County to Oxford in 1849 as the bride of Robert William Lassiter and, under the guidance of Mrs. Robert Kyle and Mrs. Russell Kingsbury, began a long life of active devotion to St. Stephen’s Church and Christian service in the community. The congregation’s beginnings were due in large part to those women’s devotion, and their husbands served on the committee that built the original church, consecrated April 20, 1833. Near the end of her life, she saw the consecration of the present church edifice on June 11, 1902, after many years of labor and self-denial by many men and women, among them Mrs. Sarah Hall, Mrs. James Horner, Mrs. Melissa Hunter Gilliam, and building committee members Robert W. Lassiter, John C. Hall, and Jerome C. Horner. In September 1862, to provide a refuge for family members from the war-torn eastern counties, her husband bought this house near St. Stephen’s churchyard, and there she and her family extended hospitality to relatives affected by the Civil War, including her widowed mother, siblings and in-laws touched by battle, and the widow and children of Major Tristrim Lowther Skinner.