Setting a charitable example, Elizabeth Henry Campbell Russell fostered the fledgling Methodist Church in southwestern Virginia as a devoted adherent and through material and compassionate support of the church.
At a time when women had few rights, Ann Makemie Holden managed her large plantation on the Eastern Shore and strove to uphold the ideals of the American Revolution.
Concerned about the plight of orphaned girls, Elizabeth Ambler Brent Carrington helped establish the Female Humane Association of the City of Richmond at a time when women rarely played a role in public affairs.
Edith Turner, chief of the Nottoway, successfully navigated nineteenth-century Nottoway and Anglo-American societies while she strove to keep the tribe’s children on the reservation.