Women have been an integral part of West Virginia history for centuries, whether it’s for their contribution to the growth of the state or their efforts to promote the state on a wide scale through their accomplishments. Below are just a sampling of women who have made their mark on the Mountain State.
Anna Jarvis – Jarvis, born in Webster in 1864, is the creator of a national holiday that celebrates women, Mother’s Day. Jarvis’ own mother encouraged her through her childhood and into adulthood, urging her to go to college. Her mother had expressed a desire for a holiday commemorating mothers, and Jarvis took up the cause to make it happen. In 1908, three years after Jarvis’ mother died, the first celebration of Mother’s Day was held in Grafton at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church.
Pearl S. Buck – Born in Hillsboro in 1892, Buck won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel “The Good Earth” in 1932. That novel also won the William Dean Howells Medal in 1935 for being the best novel written in a five-year span. Buck also won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938, the first American woman to win that prize. A prolific writer, she was a prominent advocate for the rights of women and minority groups.
Dr. Harriet Jones – Born in Pennsylvania in 1856, Jones’ family moved to Preston County when she was 6. After attending Wheeling Female College and the Women’s Medical College of Baltimore. Jones became the first woman doctor to be licensed in the state of West Virginia in 1886. She settled in Wheeling and became very active in several women’s rights organizations.
Katherine Johnson – Born in White Sulphur Springs in 1918, Johnson spent 33 years working for NASA and its predecessor. Her calculations of orbital mechanics were critical to the success of the first U.S. crewed spaceflight and many others that followed. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, the Congressional Gold Medal in 2019 and her story was immortalized in the Oscar-nominated movie “Hidden Figures.”
Helen Holt – Holt, born in Illinois in 1913, was the wife of late U.S. Senator Rush Holt, but she carved out her own political history as well. In 1957, she was the first woman to hold statewide office in West Virginia when then-Gov. Cecil Underwood appointed her Secretary of State, a position she held until 1959.
Dr. Mildred Mitchell-Bateman – Born in Brunswick, Georgia, in 1922, Mitchell-Bateman became the first woman and African-American to hold the position of West Virginia’s mental health commissioner, a role she played from 1962-77. Later in her career, she became the clinical director of Huntington State Hospital, which was renamed Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Hospital in her honor in 1999.
Mary Lou Retton – Born in Fairmont in 1968, Retton captivated the country after winning the gold medal in the all-around gymnastics competition in the 1984 Summer Olympics. She was named Sports Illustrated’s Sportswoman of the Year and graced the front of Wheaties cereal boxes.
The West Virginia Tourism website contributed to this report.
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