ENTRY

Ella G. Agnew (1871–1958)

SUMMARY

Ella G. Agnew was a prominent educator and social worker who advanced employment opportunities for women early in the 1900s long before there was a woman’s liberation movement. She served as the first president of the Virginia Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs and worked in the national office of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). During the Great Depression, Agnew directed women’s relief activities in Virginia.

Ella Graham Agnew was born at Roseland in Prince Edward County on March 18, 1871. Her family moved to Burkeville when her mother died the following year. After completing her early education in the local schools, she took a stenography course at Smithdeal Business College in Richmond and in 1892 became secretary to the principal of Stonewall Jackson Institute, a women’s college, in Abingdon for two years. She then took another secretarial position at a Long Island publishing firm before embarking on a trip that would change her life.

In 1895 Agnew went to South Africa to teach secretarial skills at Huguenot Academy in the western Cape province of Paarl, and while there she also became involved in the student Christian movement. Two years later she became principal of the Amajuba Seminary in Wakkerstrom, Transvaal, but when the Boer War erupted (1899–1902) she returned to the United States to teach near her home town while continuing her education through correspondence courses.

Joseph D. Eggleston Jr.

Agnew’s rural upbringing and religious beliefs directed her into service with the YWCA, where she focused on rural education for young girls. With support from Joseph D. Eggleston, the Virginia superintendent of public instruction, and Seaman A. Knapp, a noted agriculturist and founder of the rural home demonstration program, Agnew created a vocational training program for young women in Nansemond County in 1910. In so doing, she became the first full-time home demonstration agent in the nation. The program emphasized the need for women to develop management prowess as well as practical skills in the operation of their farms. From 1914 to 1919, she was a home demonstration agent for Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg (VPI, now Virginia Tech), which took over administration of the home demonstration program from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Agnew continued to expand her horizons, becoming the first president of the Virginia Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs in 1919. In 1920 she returned to New York to become a secretary in the finance division of the National Board of the YWCA, and traveled the country helping to raise financial support for rural chapters. As a result of her work, she became the first woman to receive the VPI certificate of merit in 1926.

In 1933, when U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal began addressing the unemployment problems created by the Great Depression, Agnew, now considered one of the nation’s foremost experts on women’s work, became director of women’s relief activities in Virginia for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). The Women’s Work Division concentrated on obtaining equal job opportunities for women in the relief program. Agnew urged the creation of jobs for women in libraries, clerical and recreational positions, sewing rooms, and mattress centers. Although she was unable to get the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to establish camps for women, she persuaded FERA to use women in slum clearance projects and in creating bird and wildflower sanctuaries. She devised programs for Virginia shut-ins that included mending, soap-making, and rug-making. She even had women catching rats on the Norfolk piers. When the Works Progress Administration (WPA) took over the relief program, Agnew stayed on to direct its expanded Women’s Work Division and continued to do so until the WPA was terminated in 1943. In her retirement she was honored with awards for her work with rural women. She died on February 5, 1958.

MAP
TIMELINE
March 18, 1871
Ella Graham Agnew is born at Roseland in Prince Edward County.
1892
Ella G. Agnew becomes secretary to the principal of Stonewall Jackson Institute, a women's college in Abingdon.
June 1895
Ella G. Agnew sails to South Africa to teach secretarial skills at Huguenot Academy in Paarl.
February 1910
Ella G. Agnew creates a vocational training program for young women in Nansemond County (now Suffolk).
1914
Ella G. Agnew becomes a home demonstration agent for Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute (now Virginia Tech). She works in this capacity until 1919.
1919
Ella G. Agnew becomes the first president of the Virginia Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs.
1920
Ella G. Agnew moves to New York to become a secretary in the finance division of the National Board of the YWCA and travels the country to raise financial support for rural chapters.
1926
Ella G. Agnew is the first woman to receive the Virginia Polytechnic Institute certificate of merit.
1933
Considered one of the nation's foremost experts on women's work, Ella G. Agnew becomes director of women's relief activities in Virginia for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration.
February 5, 1958
Ella G. Agnew dies in Richmond and is buried in Sunset Cemetery in Burkeville.
FURTHER READING
  • Heinemann, Ronald L. Depression and New Deal in Virginia. The Enduring Dominion. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1983.
  • Swain, Martha, and Helen Wolfe Evans. “Agnew, Ella Graham.” In Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Vol. 1, edited by John T. Kneebone, J. Jefferson Looney, Brent Tarter, and Sandra Gioia Treadway, 43–44. Richmond: Library of Virginia, 1998.
CITE THIS ENTRY
APA Citation:
Heinemann, Ronald. Ella G. Agnew (1871–1958). (2020, December 07). In Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/agnew-ella-g-1871-1958.
MLA Citation:
Heinemann, Ronald. "Ella G. Agnew (1871–1958)" Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (07 Dec. 2020). Web. 30 May. 2023
Last updated: 2021, December 22
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