Helen Timmons Henderson

Helen Timmons Henderson (May 23, 1877 – July 12, 1925) was a schoolteacher and politician from Virginia. She was the first woman ever to be nominated for the Virginia House of Delegates; with Sarah Lee Fain, in 1923, she was one of the first two women elected to that body, and to the Virginia General Assembly as a whole.

Life and career Helen Timmons was born on May 23, 1877 in Cass County, Missouri, where her parents were visiting, and grew up in Jefferson County, Tennessee. She attended Carson–Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee, where she studied to become a schoolteacher; one of her professors there was Robert Anderson Henderson, whom she would later marry. and would sometimes speak at two in the same day.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch described Henderson's opposition as coming "from some independent Democrats, Republicans, and wets", the last referring to opponents of Prohibition.

Henderson's daughter Helen Ruth would follow in her mother's footsteps, both as a schoolteacher and as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, to which body she was first elected in 1927; in the 1928 session she was one of four women serving in the House. With her husband Henderson also had a son, Robert Ashby Henderson.

A historical marker honoring Henderson in Buchanan County was erected in 2010 by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. A portion of Virginia Route 80 is named the "Helen Henderson Highway" in her honor, and she was inducted in 2013 into the Southwest Virginia Walk of Fame, located at the Southwest Virginia Museum Historical State Park in Big Stone Gap.