ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 28, 1996 TAG: 9603280009
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SU CLAUSON-WICKER SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
The mountains and hills of Western and Central Virginia have produced women of great pluck, courage and imagination. While some have gained international attention as novelists, poets and politicians, others may only be known through a brief inscription on a roadside marker in some field or hollow. Women's History Month serves as a convenient Feast of All Souls for these dynamic women - a time to trot out their stories, to celebrate their deeds, to exhume their memories.
Danville
A post in front of a Broad Street building in Danville marks the site of a frame house, long demolished, where beautiful sisters were born. Irene Langhorne, known for her waspish waist and ample bust, married the artist Charles Dana Gibson in 1895 and became the first "Gibson Girl," made famous by his drawings. It is rumored that she racked up 62 marriage proposals before settling down.
Her younger sister, Nancy Langhorne, received only 17 proposals before her first marriage, but was able to catch up in a second go-round before marrying Waldorf Astor, heir to one of the wealthiest men in the world.
The couple lived in England, where Lady Astor successfully ran for Parliament. She was elected in 1919, the first woman to sit in the British Parliament, and fought for women's rights and against the "demon drink" with vigor for the next 25 years.
Gore|
A marker on private land near Gore, west of Winchester on U.S. 50, commemorates the spot where writer Willa Cather was born in 1873. She spent her early childhood several miles away at the Willowshade farm, where six generations of her mother's family had farmed.
Although most of Cather's writing interprets the Midwest, where she moved when she was 9, her novel "Sapphira and the Slave Girl" draws heavily upon her Frederick County childhood for its characters, names and descriptions. The old Sibert mill on Back Creek is clearly identifiable in this book.
Cather received a Pulitzer Prize for her novel "One of Ours," and medals from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for her entire body of work, which included "My Antonia," "O Pioneers!" and "Death Comes for the Archbishop."
Lynchburg|
The poet Anne Spencer entertained the leading musicians and writers of the Harlem Renaissance at her house on 1313 Pierce St. in Lynchburg.
She was born near Martinsville, but spent her most formative years in Lynchburg, where she became an 11-year-old Virginia Seminary student in 1893. She married fellow graduate Edward Spencer eight years later and lived in Lynchburg until her death in 1975. She had an impact on the community as a poet, an organizer of the Lynchburg Chapter of the NAACP and the librarian of the first Lynchburg library to serve blacks.
Her home, the center of black culture in Lynchburg, is open to the public several days a week by appointment. Both the house and "Edankraal," the garden house where she wrote, are on the National Register of Historic Sites. To see the home, call (804) 846-0517.
Covington|
Anne Dennis Trotter Bailey earned her nickname, "Mad Anne," for her single-minded pursuit of revenge after Indians killed her husband in 1774. And, although compelled by a dark motivation to take up her rifle, Bailey's efforts made a life-and-death difference for settlers in Western Virginia.
James Trotter was killed in the Battle of Point Pleasant, W.Va. When Bailey was notified of his death, she donned men's clothing, grabbed her ax and her rifle, left her 7-year-old son with a friend, and took off to become an Indian scout, according to "Centennial History of Alleghany County" by Oren Morton.
Mad Anne had come to Virginia as an indentured servant, which seemed to have sharpened her already tough character. Tales of her feats are legendary. She took scalps in the Indian tradition and was a skilled tracker.
In his history, Morton tells of Bailey's riding out of Fort Lee (now Charleston, W.Va.) to get supplies during an Indian siege. She returned on her horse, Liverpool, leading an extra horse bearing a supply of gunpowder. This feat was performed in 1791, when she was 49.
For a while, Mad Anne lived in a hut north of Covington near the Falling Spring Waterfall. A plaque, off U.S. 220, stands on what is now called Mad Anne Ridge. Morton remarked that Anne could drink and swear like a man, but her manner was affable. She married John Bailey in 1785, but outlived him by many years.
As an elderly woman, she went to live near her son in Gallia County, Ohio. "Eccentric to the last, she refused to live in his comfortable home and built herself a cabin out of fence rails," Morton writes. Bailey died at the age of 83.
Radford|
A marker (by the Radford Business and Professional Women's Association) at Mary Draper Ingles' unmarked grave near the New River and a monument at a west Radford cemetery celebrate this pioneer woman who escaped her Indian captors in 1755.
Ingles was pregnant when she and her son were captured by Shawnees in what is now Blacksburg and marched to Big Bone Lick, Ky. She managed to escape in early fall and, by following the rivers, made her way back home in 40 days. She was found, barely alive, at the Eggleston cliffs by Adam Harmon. The culmination of her journey is re-enacted each November at the site, now owned by Harmon descendant Jim Connell.
Ingles and her husband eventually moved to the New River area near Radford, where they operated a ferry. They had four more children and their first son returned - very much an Indian in language and manners. The second son had died shortly after birth.
Mary Ingles lived to the age of 83 in a small cabin on the New River. Tourists now gather at that site each summer weekend to view "The Long Way Home" drama based on her life.
Tazewell|
A state highway marker on U.S. 61 near Tazewell tells us that "To the north was 'Rocky Dell,' the home of Samuel Tynes. From here on July 17, 1863, his daughter Molly rode across the mountains to Wytheville to warn the town of an attack by Federal forces under Colonel J.T. Toland."
It is popularly believed in Tazewell that 25-year-old Mary Elizabeth (Molly) Tynes took the role of a female Paul Revere, warning neighbors along the 53-mile ride to Wytheville of an impending attack. If the Yankees had won, they would likely have destroyed railroad links to Tennessee and captured the Fort Chiswell lead mines.
According to David Sabine in "The Midnight Ride of Mollie [sic] Tynes," published in the Civil War Times Illustrated, "Tynes rode over the Rich, Garden, and Walker mountains, pausing at the cabins to rouse the inhabitants. There were few sturdy men left in the mountains, but the older men and boys seized their guns and forced federal forces to withdraw." In the ensuing fighting, Col. Toland was killed, his major wounded, and the cavalry routed.
Molly Tynes was a city girl who had lived most of her life around Lynchburg and attended Hollins College. She had come to stay with her parents in Tazewell a few months before that July when Federal cavalrymen camped on a neighbor's farm. Through Yankee soldiers standing guard near the Tynes' home, she heard about plans to destroy the railroad near Wytheville.
Her parents were too sick and elderly to make the long journey, so Molly volunteered. "Accounts stress the fact that they knew the dangers of the journey, but 'being loyal Southerners, they were willing for her to go,'" says Louise Leslie in her history of Tazewell County.
One hundred years later, in July 1963, 21 horseback riders followed Molly Tynes' trail to Wytheville in celebration of her deed.
Elk Creek|
The state marker tells us that, in this area four miles south of the Wythe County line, the 5-year-old daughter of James and Lovis Sage was captured by Indians in 1792. Fifty-six years later, a brother found Caty Sage living with the Wyandot Indians in eastern Kansas.
LENGTH: Long : 147 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. The Lynchburg birthplace of poet Anne Spencer. 2.by CNBThis house at Gore, west of Winchester, is the birthplace of author
Willa Cather. color. (headshots) 3. Nancy Langhorne, Lady Astor, who
became the first woman member of Parliament in Britain, was born in
Danville. 4. Cather. Graphic. Map: color.