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Date: | Mon, 23 Jan 2006 09:27:30 EST |
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Forget Pocahontas! Seventeenth Century Virginia’s real feminist icon was an
intelligent, ambitious, and well-connected blonde who married three Royal
Governors and left an indelible mark upon the colony’s political history. For
more than three decades, “Lady” Frances Culpeper Stephens Berkeley Ludwell
was unquestionably Virginia’s most politically powerful woman. An astute
political operator in her own right, she used her high-level contacts in London
and Virginia to bolster her husbands’ careers and her personal estate. Her
influence upon her second husband, Governor Sir William Berkeley, was so great
that some historians have blamed her for the outbreak of Bacon’s Rebellion.
Following Berkeley's death, she led the “Green Spring Faction’s” resistance
against London’s efforts to impose more direct bureaucratic control upon
Virginia.
Daniel Lovelace, President
The Friends of the National Park Service for Green Spring, Inc.
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