North Carolina Women Through History

March is Women's History Month. Here is a brief look at some notable women in North Carolina's rich history.

Virginia Dare

Virginia Dare is known as the first English child born in the New World. Born August 18, 1587, her parents were Ananias Dare and Elinor White, John White’s daughter. She would become part of the “Lost Colony” when her grandfather went back to England for supplies and came back to find the Roanoke Colony gone. She was called Virginia after the new land they claimed for England, which they named after the “Virgin Queen,” Elizabeth I. Since the colony was never heard from again, Virginia’s date of death is unknown.

Dolley Madison

Dolley Payne Madison was born May 20, 1768, in the Quaker community of New Garden, North Carolina, which would be in Greensboro today. When just a toddler, Dolley’s family moved back to a plantation in eastern Virginia, where she grew up until she turned fifteen and her father moved the family to Philadelphia. After some problems, Dolley married John Todd, a Quaker lawyer, and they had two sons. However, John and one son died of a yellow fever epidemic in 1793, and she married James Madison in 1794. He became the Secretary of State under Jefferson and then the President of the United States in 1809. History often remembers Dolley as the First Lady who saved some of the White House's important portraits when the British burned parts of Washington, DC, in the War of 1812, although others also played an important role in that.

Cornelia Phillips Spencer

Although born in Harlem, New York City, in March of 1825, when Cornelia Phillips Spencer was just a year old, her father accepted a position teaching math at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and moved his family there. She married James Monroe Spencer in 1855 and they moved to Alabama, but he died in 1861, and Cornelia moved back to Chapel Hill. There she wrote for newspapers and penned her first book. When the university closed during reconstruction in 1870, she agreed with the decision to try to avoid the political upheaval, but she worked to have it reopen in 1875. She was the first woman awarded an honorary degree from the university and died in 1908.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was born in Henderson, North Carolina, in 1883, but she was educated in Massachusetts. Her first job was teaching African-American children at the Bethany Institute back in Sedalia, North Carolina, but the American Missionary Association decided to close it down the year after she started. Charlotte worked hard to establish her own school for the children. She eventually opened the Palmer Memorial Institute as both a day and boarding school. She received national attention for her dedicated efforts and became a popular lecturer and speaker. She died in Greensboro in 1971.

Marie Watters Coleman

Born in Charlotte in 1922 and graduating from the UNC with a major in romance languages, Marie Watters Coleman became a code-breaker for the army during WWII. Her husband’s involvement in politics after they moved to Asheville led her to become interested, and she sat in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 1978 until 1994, becoming Speaker Pro Tempore for the last four years. She died in 2018.

Katie G. Dorsett

Born in Mississippi in 1932, Katie G. Dorsett attended several universities before finishing her doctorate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She stayed in North Carolina, becoming a state senator and eventually Majority Whip. After retiring, she remained active in community affairs around Greensboro and was inducted to the North Carolina Women’s Hall of Fame in 2010.

Nina Simone

Taking the stage name of Nina Simone, Eunice Kathleen Wayman was born in Tryon, North Carolina in 1933. Her father was a preacher. With the help of a few local people who recognized her musical talent, she enrolled in the Julliard School of Music in New York. Along the way to success, she ran into some opposition that she thought came from racial prejudice. Not only did she make a name for herself as a versatile musician of many different genres, but she also became active in the Civil Rights Movement. She died in 2003 in France.

Elizabeth Dole

Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford Dole was born in Salisbury, North Carolina, on July 29, 1936. She graduated with distinction from Duke University in 1958 with a political science major and did post-graduate work at Oxford. She also got a master’s degree in education from Harvard followed by a law degree. Elizabeth married Robert Dole in 1975. She’s held numerous political offices, including Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Labor, and U.S. Senator from North Carolina. She also helped her husband run for President in 1996, and she started to run in 2000 but pulled out before the primaries due to lack of funds and low poll ratings. She was a senator from 2003–2009.

Justice Sarah Parker

Sarah Parker was born in Charlotte and attended Meredith College and graduated from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. After graduation, she served in the Peace Corps in Turkey before coming back home to get her law degree from UNC. She served for several years on the North Carolina Supreme Court. In 2006, Governor Mike Easley appointed Sarah as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and she held the position for most of the time until she retired in 2014.

Bev Perdue

Born in Virginia, Beverly Marlene Moore Perdue ended up settling in New Bern, North Carolina. She began her political career as a state representative and then a senator. In 2000, she successfully ran for lieutenant governor, where she cast the tie-breaking vote for the state lottery. She became the Governor of North Carolina in 2008.

Patricia Timmons-Goodson

Pat Timmons-Goodson was born in Florence, South Carolina in 1954, the daughter of a soldier. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University Law School. Pat served as an assistant district attorney before becoming a district judge in 1984. Governor Jim Hunt appointed her to the North Carolina Court of Appeals and after she retired, Governor Mike Easley appointed her to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2006, where she became the first African-American woman to serve there. She was inducted into the North Carolina Women’s Hall of Fame in 2010 and now serves as Vice Chair on the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Jennifer Pharr Davis

Jennifer Pharr Davis was born in Hendersonville, North Carolina in 1985. She attended Samford University and has received national attention as a long-distance hiker. She has walked over 1,200 miles on trails worldwide, including the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, Colorado, and the Long Trails in the United States and others in Australia, South America, and Europe and set records as well. She has been National Geographic’s Adventurer of the Year and an Ambassador for the American Hiking Society. In addition, she is an author and speaker.

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