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The frontier woman for whom the new Margaret Brent Elementary School in Stafford County is named dared to challenge the Colonial view of women's role in society. Date published: 8/28/2004 By LEE WOOLF THE VOICES of more than 600 Stafford children will fill the halls of the county's newest elementary school when it opens next month. The voices of an estimated 60 million women will be heard at the polls two months later when America elects a president. Both groups share in the legacy of a woman who raised her voice more than 350 years ago in advocating women's rights, the practice of law and religious tolerance. Her name was Margaret Brent. She lived from 1601 to 1671 and is recognized as both the nation's first female attorney and the first woman in America to demand the right to vote. She also was the first woman to own enormous tracts of land in both Maryland and Virginia, and lived the last two decades of her life in present-day Stafford County. Brent also is believed to be buried in Stafford. And that's partly why Margaret Brent Elementary School, which will welcome its first students this fall near the intersection of Mountain View and Choptank roads, was named in her honor. How far was Margaret Brent ahead of her time? Her demand for voting rights came 272 years before the passage of the 19th Amendment granted women's suffrage in 1920. Her first appearances before the provincial court came 220 years before a handful of pioneering American women began legal careers in the 1860s. And her family's acceptance of religious diversity on the Virginia frontier came more than 100 years before Thomas Jefferson penned the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. "For a woman to accomplish so much at a time when women had so few rightswell, it's just amazing," said Jane Conner, president of the Stafford County Historical Society. "She's a great role model. The lesson the kids can learn from Margaret Brent is that if you set your mind to it, you can do anything." During his tenure as a member of the Stafford County School Board, David Kerr of Aquia Harbour was a motivating force in having an elementary school named for Brent. He said he first became interested because of Brent's connection to Stafford and because she thrived as a single woman living a frontier existence. Then, the more he learned, the more impressed he became.
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