Suffragette. She was an early supporter and leader of the women's suffrage movement in Missouri. Virginia Louisa Minor was born March 27, 1824 in Caroline County, Virginia to Warner and Marie Timberlake Minor. Virginia moved with her family to Charlottesville when her father was appointed hotel keeper at the University of Virginia. Virginia was educated at home and for a short time at an academy for young ladies in Charlottesville. On August 31, 1843, she married her distant cousin Francis Minor, a lawyer and graduate of Princeton and the University of Virginia. They moved to Mississippi, where they lived close to family members who had emigrated there. Although they came from wealthy southern families, the Minors supported the Union during the Civil War. Minor joined the Ladies' Union Aid Society, whose members donated supplies, provided financial assistance and served as battlefield nurses. She also assisted in hospitals in the St. Louis area through the Western Sanitary Commission, and provided produce from her farm to Benton Barracks, a Union training facility three miles north of her home, to improve the diet of the soldiers. In 1865, she is credited with being the first Missouri woman, who publicly suggested that women be granted the vote. On October 15, 1872, she attempted to register to vote in the sixth district of St. Louis, and when she was refused for reason of gender, she brought a law suit against the registrar, Mr. Reese Happersett. She claimed the 14th Amendment gave her the right to vote. The test case Minor v. Happersett of 1874 was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although the case was lost by a unanimous decision, the case generated much publicity for the cause of woman suffrage. The decision stated "citizenship does not confer a right to vote" and the state's voting laws were upheld as there was no violation of the United States Constitution. Her husband was very supportive of the cause and was one of the six males, whose names are listed on the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial in Fairfax County, Virginia. Attempting the right to vote, she became active with several women's groups including National Woman's Suffrage Association, the American Woman Suffrage Association, and was the first president of the Women's Suffrage Association of Missouri. She resigned from these activities for health reasons in 1892 and dying two years later without the right to vote. She and her husband had only one child, a son, who was killed in a shooting accident at age 14 in 1866. In the 21st century, she was inducted in the Hall of Famous Missourian in December of 2013 and named honoree of the National Women's History Alliance in 2020. Her bronze bust was unveiled in 2014 as one of forty-four on permanent display in the Missouri State Capitol.