Here are even more women who were born in the commonwealth Virginia or who lived or worked in Virginia during a significant period of their lives:

• Pearl Bailey: Virginia-born entertainer and human rights worker.
• Clara Brown: ex-slave who later moved to the West.
• Maybelle Carter:  folk and country music pioneer, she was born in Virginia, learned to sing and play hill country music here, and began her career at local events.
• Ella Fitzgerald: Born in Newport News, she first encountered jazz in Harlem and became one of its best-known singers.
• Jessie Ann Benton Frémont: daughter of Missouri Sen. Thomas Hart Benton and married to John C. Frémont, best known as a California politician, it's less known that she was born in Virginia.
• Ellen Glasgow: Pulitzer Prize author from Virginia, she set many of her novels in her home state.
• Drusilla Dunjee Houston: Virginia-born author became a writer, part of the Harlem Renaissance.
• Marjorie Stewart Joyner: Virginia-born inventor and educator, she worked with Madam C. J. Walker and Mary McLeod Bethune.
• Kate Smith: Virginia native who became a popular 20th century singer and television personality.
• Sally Louisa Tompkins: Confederate Civil War nurse, commissioned a captain by Jefferson Davis.
• Elizabeth Van Lew: Abolitionist before and Union spy during the Civil War, she later became a U.S. postmistress and suffrage worker.
• Betty Zane helped defend Wheeling, then part of Virginia, from Indian attack in 1782, becoming a legend. Zane Grey, the western writer, is a descendant. 

Back to first page > 10 Women of Virginia

Text copyright 1999-2004 © Jone Johnson Lewis.