Mary Draper Ingles, the Radford pioneer woman, captured by Native Americans in the summer of 1755 and commemorated by the town for her harrowing 500 mile walk to get home to the New River Valley is one of twelve women who will be honored as part of the Virginia Women’s Monument in Richmond.
The Long Way Home, Inc., which presents the Radford outdoor history-drama telling the story of Ingles’ capture and escape is one of the donors to the Virginia Women’s Monument project.
Recently, members from the monument project visited Radford and toured the Ingles statue, viewed the Mary video and permanent exhibit at the Radford Visitor’s Center and visited Ingles Farm.
Tourism Director Deb Cooney helped welcome the committee.
“Radford is very excited to work in partnership with the Richmond project to continue to tell the story of Mary and her epic journey,” Cooney said. “The story is a key piece of our heritage and continues to be one of the leading reasons that visitors come to Radford.”
The monument is part of Virginia’s year-long commemoration of a 400th anniversary entitled “2019 Commemoration, American Evolution” that highlights events of 1619 Virginia that made the state and the nation what it is today.
The year 1619 marks “the first representative legislative assembly in the New World, the arrival of the first recorded Africans to English North America, the recruitment of English women in significant numbers, the first official English Thanksgiving in North America, and the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit of the Virginia Colony,” Governor Ralph Northam stated in a proclamation earlier this month.
The 400th anniversary aims to “build awareness of Virginia’s role in the creation of the United States.”
The commemoration also aims to recognize, overlooked actors in the nation’s history.
“The Virginia Women’s Monument is the nation’s first monument designed to celebrate the remarkable women who made significant, but often unrecognized, contributions and accomplishments in a variety of fields and endeavors over the 400-year history of Virginia,” Sara Hunt, spokesperson for the Monument project said.
In addition to being recognized by the state, Mary Draper Ingles’ life is celebrated in a number of public art objects and reenactments scattered throughout Radford, its town and landscape, including a bronze statue in the sculpture garden at Glencoe Mansion, Museum & Gallery, an obelisk at Westview Cemetery, the Ingles Farm itself, a documentary film at the Radford Visitor’s Center at Glencoe and a popular summer play called “Walk to Freedom.”
“In fact, the dates for the 2019 outdoor drama will be announced soon and we expect another successful season,” Cooney said
The 12 statues that will make up the Virginia Women’s Monument, described by Hunt as “very realistic,” are being created using women models by StudioEIS, a Brooklyn-based sculpture and design studio that also created the vision for the monument.
Four statues have been funded and, at $100,000 each, the last funding push for eight statues, including the Ingles rendering, is entering its final phases the Virginia Capitol Foundation said.
The four statues that have been commissioned are Native American chieftain Cockacoeske, Jamestown settler Anne Burras Laydon, educator Virginia E. Randolph and suffragist/artist Adèle Clark.
The eight statues that still need funding include: Martha Washington, Mary Draper Ingles, Clementina Rind, Elizabeth Keckly, Sally L. Tompkins, Maggie L. Walker, Sarah G. Jones and Laura S. Copenhaver, according to the Virginia Capitol Foundation.
For more information or to make a contribution to the Virginia Women’s Monument, visit www.virginiacapitol.gov. Contributions can be designated for a particular statue.
