Kate Chase was educated at the Haines School in New York City, where she learned languages, elocution and the social graces along with music and history. After nine years of schooling, she returned to Columbus, Ohio, to serve as official hostess for her father, the newly elected Governor of Ohio, and by now widowed a third time. Beautiful and intelligent, Kate impressed such friends of her father as Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts senator and fellow anti-slavery champion; future President James Garfield; and Carl Schurz, a German-born American politician, who described her as follows: