Catherine Stewart Howarth (Carter-Lewia) was born on September 30, 1913 in Chester, Pennsylvania. Catherine Carter was her professional name. Her mother, Mary Stewart Howarth-Hewitt, a Chi Omega, was the first woman to attend and graduate from John B. Stetson University’s College of Law. In fact, Howarth-Hewitt was the first Florida woman to hold that honor. Mary’s father and Catherine’s grandfather was a prominent lawyer and judge in DeLand, Florida.
Carter enrolled at Stetson where she was a member of several organizations including a local sorority, Sigma Alpha Phi, which began in 1926. After she received her Bachelor’s degree, she enrolled at George Washington University. There she became a member of the Beta Alpha Chapter of Zeta Tau Alpha. At GWU she received a Master’s in International Law.
She was 20 when she received her Bachelor of Law degree. An attorney was required to be 21 years of age to practice law in Florida, but she petitioned to be admitted to practice early and it was granted on June 30, 1934. She was the 112th woman admitted to the Florida Bar. She then entered into private practice with her mother, Mary Stewart Howarth-Hewitt, and her uncle, Tom B. Stewart. Stewart and Stewart was one of the oldest law firms in Florida. Her grandfather established it in 1882.
In 1934, Sigma Alpha Phi, the local sorority she had pledged at Stetson became the Beta Psi Chapter of Zeta Tau Alpha. The pledging ceremony took place at the Howarth home on October 12, 1934. For many years, Carter served as chapter advisor to Zeta Tau Alpha’s chapter at Stetson.
She married J. Howard Carter in 1935 and the law firm took on the name Stewart, Howarth and Carter. The Carters had four children.
Carter specialized in domestic relations law, wills, trusts, probate and real estate. In 1947, she became a founding trustee of the Lawyers’ Title Guaranty Fund (now Attorneys’ Title Insurance Fund). For about two decades, from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s, Carter did marriage counseling.
In the late 1940s, the Carters divorced. She remarried in April 1958. Her second husband, Harry G. Lewia died in 1974.
In 1984, the Florida Bar gave Carter a silver plate to honor her 50 years of legal practice in Florida. She died on August 17, 2000. After her death she was honored at a ceremonial session of Florida’s Supreme Court which recognized the state’s first 150 female attorneys.
