Katharina von Bora with the family of Philipp Reichenbach, the city clerk of Wittenberg. Later she went to the home of Lucas Cranach the Elder and his wife, Barbara. Katharina had a number of suitors, including Wittenberg University alumnus Jerome (Hieronymus) Baumgärtner (1498–1565) of Nuremberg and a pastor, Kaspar Glatz of Orlamünde. None of the proposed matches resulted in marriage. She told Luther’s friend and fellow reformer, Nikolaus von Amsdorf, that she would be willing to marry only Luther or von Amsdorf himself. Martin Luther, and many of his friends as well, were at first unsure of whether he should even be married.
Catharine Merrill 1867 and served on its board. The Catharine Merrill Club, an Indianapolis literary organization established in 1885, was named in her honor; Indianapolis Public Schools renamed Public School Number 25 the Catharine Merrill School in 1900; and Merrill's friends and former students endowed Butler University's Catharine Merrill Chair of English in 1907 (the endowment lapsed in 1930). Merrill was born on January 24, 1824, in Corydon, Indiana, to Samuel and Lydia Jane (Anderson) Merrill. Her father, a native of Vermont who attended Dartmouth College, was an early leading citizen of Indiana. He moved to Vevay, Switzerland County, Indiana, in 1816,