If we are nominating influential women who incite rebellion then I must
nominate John Ashby's wife of Ashby's Fort during the French & Indian War.
Several time's Mrs. Ashby must have caused such disruption at the fort and
inciting mutany that GW wrote to John Ashby that if he didn't get his wife
under control that GW himself was going to come to the fort and remove her
himself. LOL. Ahhh the powerful women behind the powerful men, eh?

----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 9:27 AM
Subject: Re: Great/Important 17th Century Virginian


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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