Browse Items (32 total)

Maggie Lena Walker was an African American woman, a banker, a business leader, and a civic leader. In 1903, she was the first woman to establish a bank in the United States, the Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond. She was also the first…

The broadside image is that of Equal Suffrage League of Virginia (ESL) which was founded in 1909 in Richmond. The ESL became one of the most influential suffrage organizations in the country. Among the twenty founding women, co-founder, women’s…

Circulated in Staunton, Virginia, the broadside dates to sometime between 1900 and 1919. In it, the women of Staunton asked the men in their community to vote in favor of prohibition or the legal elimination of alcohol consumption and sale. The…

The Equal Suffrage League of Virginia (ESL) was founded in 1909 in Richmond when about twenty women met at the home of Anne Clay Crenshaw. The league sought to win women the right to vote. Although the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776…

This portrait of Mary Willing Byrd (1740–1814) was painted early in the 1770s by artist Matthew Pratt. Born in Philadelphia, she was the daughter of a wealthy merchant and a god-daughter of Benjamin Franklin. In 1761 she married William Byrd…

By the 1870s, bicycles and tricycles using wire-spoked wheels were common, particularly in England. Albert A. Pope became the first American bicycle manufacturer under the trade name “Columbia” in Connecticut in 1878.The popularity of bicycles in…

Women served in many capacities during the American Revolution. Thousands of women traveled with their husbands when they served in the Continental Army. Known as "camp followers," they marched with the supply wagons, set up camps nearby, and cooked,…

For a significant portion of American history, women were not allowed to vote. Although they were considered citizens with rights equal to men, voting was considered a privilege and not a right and thus not extended to women. In the 1910s, women…

Richmond native Lila Meade Valentine was born in 1865 and devoted much of her life to advocating education, health-care reform, and woman suffrage. She played an important role in creating organizations which focused on health care and public schools…

As women participated in the movement to abolish slavery during the first half of the 19th century, some of them also began to advocate for women's rights. In July 1848, a group of women and men held a convention in Seneca Falls, New York. They…