Virginia

Virginia never developed a viable organization for the enfranchisement of women, but two women won seats in its legislature in 1924.  Moreover, it had the nation’s first mother/daughter legislators.

Sarah Lee Fain (L) and Helen Timmons Henderson (R). From Norfolk Virginian–Pilot, 9 January 1924.

Sarah Lee Fain

    Norfolk County voters elected Sarah Lee Fain to the House of Delegates in 1924.  She was a native of that area, and she taught school prior to marriage.  Because schools rarely employed married women in that era, she became involved in her husband’s construction company. This led to participation in politics, and she learned to campaign by volunteering in the re-election campaign of a U.S. senator.  When Norfolk gained an additional seat in the legislature based on population changes in the 1920 census, Fain ran for the new seat.  She was a Democrat like most Virginians at the time, and winning the Democratic primary was tantamount to election.  She served just one term, from 1921 to 1923.

Helen Timmons Henderson (1877-1925)

    With her husband, R.A. Henderson, Helen Timmons Henderson ran the Buchanan Mission School, a Baptist institution that struggled to provide education to about a hundred poor whites in Buchanan County.  They lived at the school, which boarded some students.  It was in the tiny town of Council, in the heart of the Allegheny Mountains near the West Virginia border, a region that always had been impoverished.

    Encouraged to run by church and community leaders, Henderson drove her own car to campaign – something that still was unusual – and won the 1924 election.  She was a strong advocate for her mountain people, who long had been neglected by the Richmond capital, and worked especially hard for paved roads and school improvements.  Representative Henderson was popular with her constituents and was virtually certain to win re-election  – but her health declined quickly and she died prior to the 1926 election.

    Her daughter, Helen Ruth Henderson, had replaced her at the school during the 1924 campaign, and just three years after her mother’s death, won the 1928 election.  She was the nation’s first woman to replace her mother in a legislature – and both women were named Helen Henderson.  State road 80, which runs through this area, thus honors both as “Helen Henderson Highway.”