Louis. Kate, having lost two very important male figures at an early age, developed strong ties to her grandmother. Kate's grandmother, Madame Charleville, gave birth to fifteen children with her merchant husband, Joseph Charleville. She taught Kate not only about music, history, and speaking French and she also stressed the need to live life "clearly and fearlessly.".
Two years after her father's death, Kate returned to the Academy of the Sacred Heart. Kate met a girl named Kitty Garesche. The two girls loved to write and read together, but Kate lost her best friend tragically to the Civil War. By the time she was 24 years old, she was an only child, and she had lost all of her brothers and sisters to various illnesses. Her grandmother passed away at the age of 83. Needless to say Kate was not a stranger to death of loved ones, she almost fell into a depressed state and one of the nuns of the Academy recognized the creativity in this lonely child. The nun assigned her to write a Commonplace Book, which is the first document of Kate's writings. This Commonplace Book became a diary of her intellectual and social life. .
At the age of 19, Kate met Louisiana native Oscar Chopin, age 25, son of a wealthy cotton growing family. They married on June 9, 1870. The couple established their new home in New Orleans. They shared the births of six children together. When Oscar's brokerage business failed in 1879, he decided to move north to his family's plantations in Natchitoches Parish, and it was then that Kate became acquainted with the Creole community that became such an important focus of her writing. In 1882, Oscar contracted swamp fever and died from complications of the disease in January of 1883, leaving Kate to return to St. Louis with their six young children. A year later, Kate's mother also died and Kate, emotionally burnt out from the losses in her life, got comfort from a family physician, Frederick Kolbenheyer.
