Institution

A driving tour showcasing the Library of Virginia's Virginia Women in History honorees from the Fredericksburg region.

<div>Born in Athens, Georgia, Emily White married Vivian Minor Fleming, a Virginia native, in 1876. They settled in Fredericksburg, where she became fascinated with the history of her new home. She joined efforts to erect a monument to Mary Ball Washington, the mother of George Washington, and early in the 1890s served as president of the local Mary Washington Monument Association. When historic buildings in Fredericksburg were at risk of destruction, Fleming joined with the city’s branch of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities to purchase and save some of them, including the Rising Sun Tavern and the home of Mary Ball Washington.</div><div><br></div><div>Fleming took on her most significant challenge in 1922, when she and other members of the Daughters of the American Revolution established the Kenmore Association to acquire the Fredericksburg estate of Betty Washington Lewis, George Washington’s sister. The owner of Kenmore (built in 1775) threatened to tear it down and build new houses on the site. Writing hundreds of letters to citizens across the United States, Fleming and her daughter helped raise $12,000 within five months, enabling the group to purchase the property. She continued to raise funds to restore the house and its grounds while serving as president of the Kenmore Association until 1940.</div><div><br></div><div><i>Fleming was nominated for Virginia Women in History by Melissa Smith Fitzgerald.<br><br></i><div><div><small>Reprinted with permission of the Library of Virginia.</small></div><div><small><br></small></div></div></div>

From her Hanover Street home, Emily White Fleming spearheaded efforts to preserve numerous Fredericksburg landmarks for future generations. 

Photograph of Emily White Fleming, courtesy of the Library of Virginia.

Emily White Fleming

<div>Antislavery activist Mary Minor Blackford (December 2, 1802–September 15, 1896) grew up in a slaveholding family in Fredericksburg. Profoundly affected by the tragedies she saw on a daily basis in Virginia's slaveholding society, Blackford developed strong antislavery opinions. She considered colonization a path to end slavery, and with her husband, William Blackford, she participated in the activities of the American Colonization Society.</div><div><br></div><div>In 1829 Blackford founded the Fredericksburg and Falmouth Female Auxiliary and raised funds to assist free African Americans and recently freed slaves in immigrating to Liberia. During the 1830s she reorganized the auxiliary to become the Ladies' Society of Fredericksburg and Falmouth, for the Promotion of Female Education in Africa, which helped fund an academy for girls in Liberia.</div><div><br></div><div>In the aftermath of Nat Turner's rebellion, the Virginia General Assembly received a number of petitions to end slavery in the state. Blackford drafted a petition during the winter of 1831–1832 on behalf of Fredericksburg's female residents. In it she called on legislators to make provisions for gradual emancipation. She ultimately decided not to submit her petition. In 1832 she began keeping a journal entitled "Notes Illustrative of the Wrongs of Slavery," in which she recorded her personal feelings about the horrors of slavery. Blackford later moved with her family to Lynchburg, where her public work largely ended and she became increasingly alienated from the state's proslavery sectionalism before the Civil War.<br><br><span><small>Reprinted with permission of the Library of Virginia.</small></span><br></div>

Mary Minor Blackford's family owned enslaved laborers as part of the household on Caroline Street, although the violence of slavery and its effect on society led her to become a vocal antislavery supporter.

Portrait of Mary Minor Blackford, courtesy of Mansel G. Blackford.

Mary Berkeley Minor Blackford

<div>"It has made my life better to write poetry," said Claudia Emerson (January 13, 1957–December 4, 2014) in a 2006 interview. She writes to make sense of her life. Emerson won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for <i>Poetry for Late Wife</i> (2005), a collection of personal, epistolary poems that chronicle the dissolution of a marriage, solitude and emotional healing, and discovery of a new life with a new husband whose first, beloved wife had died of cancer. She has written three other volumes, <i>Pharaoh, Pharaoh</i> (1997), <i>Pinion: An Elegy</i> (2002), and <i>Figure Studies: Poems</i> (2008), all published in the Louisiana State University Press's distinguished Southern Messenger Poets Series. Emerson's poems have appeared in many literary journals, including <i>Crazyhorse</i>, <i>Georgia Review</i>, <i>New England Review</i>, <i>Ploughshares</i>, <i>Poetry</i>, <i>Prairie Schooner</i>, <i>Southern Review</i>, and <i>TriQuarterly</i>.</div><div><br></div><div>Born in Chatham, Emerson received an MFA at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she was poetry editor for the <i>Greensboro Review</i>. In 1998 she joined the faculty of Mary Washington College (the University of Mary Washington after 2004) in Fredericksburg, where she held the Arrington Distinguished Chair in Poetry. She was a contributing editor of the literary magazine <i>Shenandoah</i>. Emerson has received fellowships from the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Virginia Commission for the Arts.</div><div><br></div><div>In August 2008 Emerson began a two-year appointment as Virginia's poet laureate. In 2013, she joined Virginia Commonwealth University as a professor of English. Emerson died of cancer in Richmond on December 4, 2014.<br><br><span><small>Reprinted with permission of the Library of Virginia.</small></span><br></div>

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Claudia Emerson lived on Marye Street in Fredericksburg while teaching at the University of Mary Washington and serving as Virginia's poet laureate in 2008–2010.

Photograph of Claudia Emerson, courtesy of Mary Washington University.

Claudia Emerson

<div>Soon after her marriage to Robert S. Barrett, an Episcopal minister, Katherine Harwood Waller Barrett (ca. 1857-23 February 1925)&nbsp;began caring for unmarried mothers and their children who were often treated as outcasts and had few opportunities to obtain medical care, occupational assistance, or a good education. Born in Falmouth, Stafford County, Kate Waller Barrett earned a medical degree in 1892 while living in Georgia, and after she moved to northern Virginia in 1896, she took part in founding the National Florence Crittenton Mission, the first philanthropic institution chartered by Congress, to care for unmarried mothers and their children.</div><div><br></div><div>First as vice president and then as president until her death in 1925, Barrett directed the national network of affiliated Crittenton mission homes and wrote and traveled throughout the world to raise money and promote good child care and other issues relating to women’s health and employment. Barrett was an honorary vice president of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, a charter member of the Virginia League of Women Voters, and a member of the board of visitors of the College of William and Mary. She took an active role in Democratic Party politics in order to advance her work on behalf of women’s issues. She was president of the National Council of Women in 1911 and in 1919 was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson as an observer to the Versailles Peace Congress. After her death, the governor of Virginia ordered the flag on the State Capitol to be lowered to half-staff, the first time a woman had ever been so honored.<br><br><div><div><small>Reprinted with permission of the Library of Virginia.</small></div><div><small><br></small></div></div><br><br></div>

Social reformer and Stafford County native Kate Waller Barrett devoted her life to providing needed medical care, shelter, education, and training for unmarried mothers and their children. She is buried at Aquia Church, where her husband had served as rector. 

Katherine Waller Barrett photograph, published in Fourteen Years' Work Among "Erring Girls" as Conducted by the National Florence Crittenton Mission… (1897), courtesy of the Library of Virginia.

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Virginia Women in History - Fredericksburg Region

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