Cornelia Deaderick Glenn

Cornelia Deaderick Glenn (September 4, 1854 – December 9, 1926) was an American society hostess and temperance activist who, as the wife of Robert Broadnax Glenn, served as First Lady of North Carolina from 1905 to 1909. She was involved in the temperance movement and avidly supported her husband's 1908 Prohibition campaign that banned liquor statewide. A devout Presbyterian, she was the founder of one of Winston-Salem's first benevolent societies.

Early life and family Nina Glenn was born Cornelia G. Deaderick on September 4, 1854, in Jonesborough, Tennessee. She was the youngest child of John Franklin Deaderick and Rebecca Lanier Williams Deaderick.

Her paternal ancestors were planters and slaveholders who owned a 5,000-acre plantation located in the Orange Mound area in Memphis. Her paternal grandfather, David Deaderick, was a banker, businessman, and Revolutionary War veteran who arrived in Jonesborough in 1783 and later served in the Tennessee General Assembly.

Marriage and public life She married Robert Broadnax Glenn, a lawyer and a distant maternal cousin, on January 8, 1878, in Knoxville. Her husband was the son of her mother's niece, Annie (Dodge) Glenn and her husband. He grew up at Lower Sauratown Plantation in Rockingham County, North Carolina.

Cornelia and Robert Glenn had two sons, Chalmers Lanier Glenn and Frank Glenn, and a daughter, Rebekah Williams Glenn.

Glenn was known as a proper and strict housekeeper, and stern mother. She was passionate about music and gardening, and was active in the temperance movement. She firmly backed her husband's Prohibition campaign in 1908 that banned liquor statewide. Bootlegging and smuggling flourished.

Later life and death While living in Raleigh, she was a parishioner at First Presbyterian Church. Upon moving back to Winston-Salem after her husband's term was over, she attended that city's First Presbyterian Church and was active in the parish's missionary causes. Glenn founded one of the first benevolent societies in Winston-Salem. She died on December 9, 1926, aged 72, following a period of illness. She was buried in Salem Cemetery.