Every March, these women gather at the Laurel Brigade Inn to bring up what historically was ignored: themselves.
Older versions of history often did not mention women, who were at one time viewed as "inferior beings with expectations of superior behavior," said Rita Koman, member of the board of directors for the Virginia Foundation for Women. "One could conclude women were never around [or] if the women were included, they were considered the supporting cast. Given that history is a reflection of the culture in which it is written, therefore is it any wonder that women by definition did not make it into the history books?" Koman explained that in the 1970s and 1980s, the number of women historians increased, so as a result "the definition of history slowly expanded to include women as a part of the scholarly examination of the past."
The League of Women Voters of Loudoun County celebrates Women’s History Month with an annual tea party. Twenty-five women and two men attended the two-hour event on Saturday.
"It does make a difference what we’re doing out there," said Sheryl Wolfe, president of the League of Women Voters, which has 78 members.
WOMEN’S HISTORY Month got its start in 1978 when a California Commission on the Status of Women initiated a women’s history week. A year later, women attending a Women’s History Institute agreed to initiate similar events in their own communities and to support a Congressional Resolution declaring a National Women’s History Week. In 1987, the National Women’s History Project petitioned Congress to expand the week to a month and both the House and Senate approved the National Women’s History Month Resolution with bipartisan support.
"At last the contribution of American women was acknowledged as being ‘consistently overlooked and undervalued in literature, teaching and the study of American history,’" Koman said before providing historical and statistical information on women. She mentioned that in 1920, women received the right to vote after 80 years of fighting for it. "Women’s suffrage was considered radical reform," she said.
In the 2000 election, 61 percent of the voters were women, but in the U.S. Congress, 14 of 100 Senate members and 59 of 435 House members are women. Fifty-six percent of college students are women, but in the workforce, women earn 75 cents to every dollar earned by men. "Obviously, the recognition of women in American society has a way to go in the 21st century to equalize opportunities for all," Koman said.
MIDDLEBURG RESIDENT Meredith Bean McMath, author and historian, spoke about Loudoun County’s Civil War women to give women some of that recognition.
"First thing you need to know is that Loudoun may have been a part of the Confederacy, but we were by no means purely southern in our convictions. Among us there were pro-Confederates, pro-Federals, pacifists, slaves and freedmen. Wives disagreed with husbands, children with parents," McMath said before telling the stories of five Loudoun-born women from Civil War times, including a Confederate spy, a Quaker journalist, a slave women, a plantation mistress and a young girl from Leesburg.
The plantation mistress was Catherine Barbara Broun of Middleburg. In "true southern hospitality," Broun provided dinner to Union officers and told them if they successfully killed all of the southern men, the women would take up the fight. "Editorials of the day moaned that the war would have ended sooner had the women not been so keen on winning," McMath said. "There’s a lot of evidence of this. Women shunned the company of gentlemen who didn’t volunteer, screamed and spat on passing soldiers or chose a more delicate form of insult and shook out their aprons at them."
McMath found Brown’s diary at the Thomas Balch Library in Leesburg. "Generally, when you read the diaries of Confederate women, they are sadly similar, righteous indignation followed by grief followed by shock and deep depression. Catherine was no exception," she said. "With friends and relatives dying [and] the Union Army constantly coming through, her diary grows sadder and sadder. … She wrote, ‘The Middleburg people are really in a pitiable condition … They are all grieving and they know not where to look, as every oxen and horse almost they have taken.’"
McMath mentioned the diary of Leesburg girl Mary E. Lack.
"The war grew people up in a hurry. Boys saw passing troops, jumped on farm horses and rode into battle with them. Girls took over the running of households. And Mary Lack, at age 15, fell in love and became engaged to a soldier," McMath said.
Lack’s diary at first read as that of "a young Scarlett O’Hara" as she fell for Mr. Magee, but she did not hear from him for a year as he headed off with the Confederate army. She died a little while later of an unknown cause just before she turned 18.
McMath said the mystery of Magee was revealed in a recent newspaper article. "That jerk survived the war, and he just never wrote or called," she said.
McMath ended her speech, reflecting that she was honored to share the stories of Broun, Lack and the other three women. "I may not always agree with their politics, but I am always impressed by their spirit and tenacity and amazing ability to find creative ways to do more than just survive," she said.