About

Presented by Widewater State Park Chief Ranger, Ellen Hillborn. In a time when women were seen as the caretakers of children and household duties, Margaret Brent stood out for many reasons: she was an unmarried head-of-household, business owner, and attorney. Emigrating from England in 1638 with her brother and sister, they were given land in Maryland by the second Lord Baltimore Cecil Calvert. From there, she would go on to become a profitable business-woman with her sister, an attorney for other colonists, executrix for the Governor of Maryland, one of the first women to request for her right to vote in the colonies, and eventually establish the first Roman Catholic community in Virginia.