Virginia Vignettes

Helen Henderson was one of the first two women elected to Virginia’s House of Delegates after women won the right to vote in 1920. A Missouri native, Henderson was a teacher in Buchanan County and helped found the Baptist Mountain School, which opened there in 1911. In 1923, a group of local Democratic men invited her to run for the county’s assembly seat. “I’m not in the Legislature for publicity,” she explained that November. “It’s simply a question of public service with me, and a duty I owe to the people back in those counties which have elected me.” She won the election by more than 400 votes, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported, despite “strenuous opposition from some independent Democrats, Republicans, and wets.” (In the terminology of the day, “wets” opposed Prohibition.) “She took a vigorous and important part” in the proceedings of the four committees on which she sat, according to the Times-Dispatch, “and on the floor was one of the most respected and influential members of the House.” Henderson died, however, in 1925, before she could stand for reelection. Governor E. Lee Trinkle, and a House resolution, praised her “many virtues, clear vision and noble aspirations.”

Further Reading:
Elihu Jasper Sutherland, Some Sandy Basin Characters (1962)

This Vignette Provided By

Jennifer Davis McDaid, Local Records Appraisal Archivist for the Library of Virginia