Virginia Women in History - Hampton Roads Region
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Description
A driving tour showcasing the Library of Virginia's Virginia Women in History honorees from the Hampton Roads region.
1. Elizabeth Ashburn Duke
Early in Elizabeth Duke's banking career, she became chief financial officer of the Bank of Virginia Beach (now inactive), which was headquartered at this location. As a member of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, Duke helped implement the Federal Reserve System's response to the financial panic of 2008.
2. Meyera E. Oberndorf
In 2008 the Virginia Beach City Council named the Meyera E. Oberndorf Central Library after the city's longest-serving mayor, who was also a tireless advocate for the city and its residents.
3. Edythe Colton Harrison
Edythe Colton Harrison's love of music led her to help establish the Virginia Opera Association and raised money to convert an auditorium into Norfolk's opera house, which is named for her.
4. Pauline Forstall Colclough Adams
The Norfolk branch of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia was established in November 1910 at the Olney Road home (no longer standing) of Pauline Adams, its organizing president and a militant suffragist who chose to go to prison for her political beliefs.
5. Georgeanna Seegar Jones
A pioneer in the field of reproductive endocrinology, Georgeanna Seegar Jones helped lead pathbreaking research into fertility treatments for women in her native Baltimore and at Eastern Virginia Medical School, in Norfolk.
6. Mary Jeffrey Galt
A resident of Norfolk at the time she helped organize the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (later Preservation Virginia), Mary Jeffrey Galt lived with her family in a house that had been located where the York Street parking garage now stands.
7. JoAnn Falletta
A dynamic and compelling conductor and music director of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra (which perfoms at Chrysler Hall), JoAnn Falletta is an advocate for contemporary music.
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8. Josephine Mathews Norcom
After her marriage to Portsmouth principal I. C. Norcom (who lived at what was then 206 N. Green Street, but is now The Heights at Old Towne), Josephine Mathews Norcom advocated educational opportunities and equal rights for African American women and men.
9. Elizabeth Bray Allen Smith Stith
During the 18th century, a time when married women had few rights, Elizabeth Bray Allen Smith Stith used her own funds to establish a free school for poor children. It was located in a building (no longer standing) located on the site of the current Smithfield Masonic lodge.
10. Flora Lonette Davis Crittenden
Flora D. Crittenden Middle School, in Newport News, is named for Crittenden, a teacher, school counselor, and member of the House of Delegates who exemplifies her belief that education is the key to success.
11. Katherine Coleman Johnson
A talented mathematician, Katherine Johnson worked for NASA at the Langley Research Center for more than thirty years and calculated the trajectories for America's earliest manned space flights and the first moon landing.
12. Christiana Burdett Campbell
Christiana Campbell became one of Williamsburg's most prominent and successful tavern keepers during the Revolutionary era. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation reconstructed her tavern in 1954–1956.
13. Frances Culpeper Stephens Berkeley Ludwell
After the death of her second husband, Virginia governor Sir William Berkeley, Frances, Lady Berkeley inherited his Green Spring plantation (no longer standing), from where she continued to promote her own political interests.
14. Temperance Flowerdew Yeardley
A prosperous woman during the earliest years of the Virginia colony and the wife of a governor at Jamestown, Temperance Flowerdew Yeardley took steps to maintain control of her financial affairs after her husband's death.
