RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — The final two statues at a Richmond memorial commemorating some of the groundbreaking women in Virginia history have been installed.
The Virginia Women’s Monument, located in Capitol Square on the 1000 block of Bank Street in Richmond, now features Sarah G. Jones, the first Black woman to pass the Virginia Medical Examining Board’s exam and Maggie L. Walker, the first Black woman to charter a bank and serve as bank president.
Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School, a public magnet school in Richmond that is considered one of the top high schools in Virginia, is named after Walker.
Jones and Walker join nine other women who have made major contributions to Virginia history:
- Cockacoeske: Chieftain of the Pamunkey Tribe
- Anne Burras: Jamestown settler, first English woman to marry in the New World
- Mary Draper Ingles: Pioneer, early settler of Western Virginia
- Elizabeth Keckley: Personal seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln, author and civil rights activist
- Laura Copenhaver: Virginia Farm Bureau Federation director of information, businesswoman, entrepreneur
- Virginia Randolph: Henrico County educator, first Jeanes Supervising Industrial Teacher
- Adele Goodman Clark: Suffragist, League of Women Voters regional director
- Martha Washington: Wife of first U.S. President George Washington
- Clementina Rind: Printer of The Virginia Gazette, first Virginian woman to print and publish a newspaper
The Virginia Women’s Monument was established by the General Assembly in 2010 and the first seven statues were unveiled in 2019.
