Laura Copenhaver

Statue of Laura Copenhaver included in the Virginia Women's Monument. Laura Lu Scherer Copenhaver (August 29, 1868 – December 18, 1940) was an American businesswoman.

Copenhaver was a native of Marion, Virginia, where her father, the Reverend John Jacob Scherer, was the first president of Marion College. She was a writer, collaborating with her younger sister, Katharine Killinger Scherer Cronk, on fiction, poetry, and church pageants; her poem "Heralds of Christ" became a popular hymn. Copenhaver was the director of information for the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation, Copenhaver pressed her local Women's Missionary Society to establish the Konnarock Training School, which offered entry-level academic and religious education to children who could not attend the regular schools, and which opened in 1925.

Copenhaver was the mother-in-law of Sherwood Anderson, and was long active as a lay leader in the Lutheran Church. After her death her sister Minerva May Scherer headed Rosemont Industries for two decades; in 1960 some of her children incorporated it as Laura Copenhaver Industries, Inc. Copenhaver was one of the Virginia Women in History inducted by the Library of Virginia in 2007.