Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 8, 1992                   TAG: 9203080010
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: D-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: FREDERICKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

EXHIBIT TRACKS 300 YEARS OF VA. WOMEN'S HISTORY

A photo of the crude cradle is part of a collection of artifacts, portraits and personal stories charting the roles of women over 350 years of Virginia history.

"A Share of Honour: Virginia Women 1600-1954" includes stories of American Indian, white and black women, starting with tribal cultures in which women held much power and ending with women's growing political and economic clout after World War II. The exhibit, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, is on display at Mary Washington College.

"We wanted something for women's history month in March that would show the importance of all women and how much they really did contribute," said Brenda Sloan, special collections curator in the college library.

The exhibit is mounted on 19 large panels, each chronicling a particular historical period or circumstance. It is taken from a larger show at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond that was the product of a five-year research project in the 1980s.

The Mary Washington exhibit begins with photos of 17th century pottery and a beaded necklace likely made by an Indian woman in Greenville County.

Court records from Northumberland County document the birth in 1656 of a child whose mother was a slave and father a slaveowner.

There are manifests of 18th century plantation households and a 1766 ad promising a reward for the return of a runaway slave.

The exhibit notes that while women had little role in the American Revolution, they did run taverns and shops while men fought.

In the early 19th century, the "cult of true womanhood" arose, a blessing and a curse for women, the exhibit says. On one hand, women were told for the first time that their roles as wives and mothers were valuable in society and that they possessed qualities superior to men. But the idea also forced women into limited social roles from which they did not fully escape for more than a century.

During the Civil War, white women again took over businesses and made decisions previously only the province of men. The exhibit features portraits of Union informant Elizabeth Van Lew and Belle Boyd, the first woman commissioned in the Confederate Army.

Educational opportunities expanded dramatically after the war for both white and black women. The exhibit features several photos of women's schools, including a Richmond portrait titled, "The Pedagogics Class of 1897 and Dr. Tefft," showing nine black women and their bespectacled white male instructor.

The exhibit covers women's role as low-paid factory workers during the Industrial Revolution, and the temperance and suffrage movements. A 1910 Equal Suffrage League of Virginia poster promises, "Better Babies, Better Homes, Better Schools," if women get the vote.

"This gives new meaning to the phrase, `we've come a long way, baby,"' Sloan said.

The exhibit includes a 1930s portrait of Sara Lee Fain, the first woman member of the General Assembly, alongside a photo of rural black midwives of the same period.

There is a photo of Maggie Walker, the first black woman banker in Virginia, and a 1929 shot of the woman-owned Nachman's Department store in Newport News.

One panel shows the growth of women in the work force through the 20th century and touches on women's contributions to the labor movement.

"Things like this are important because so many of our students don't know their own history," Sloan said. "I hope one day we don't have to have a women's history month or a black history month, but until that time these are important things for students to learn."