“I simply could not say ‘no’...”

 

This was Roberta Lee Morgan Strother’s reply in 1908 when approached by several women who wanted to join the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution in Lynchburg, but were unable to do so due to membership limitations in existing local chapters. Strother, already a member of one of the city’s chapters, obtained approval from NSDAR to establish a new group and forged ahead.

 

The Lynchburg Chapter’s first official meeting took place in the ladies’ parlor of the Lynchburg YMCA on January 14, 1909, with 18 charter members. In the first year, 45 additional members joined—including Marion Fontaine Cabell Henry Tyree, a granddaughter of Patrick Henry. The chapter’s early service projects included educational support of child laborers, research on early Lynchburg history, encouragement of U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence studies in local schools, and advocacy of legislation for scientific education.

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Strother was born in Campbell County, Virginia, to James Lorenzo Morgan (1830-1872) and Martha Virginia Brown Morgan (1832-1892). Her family moved to Missouri when she was very young child and then spent several of the Civil War years in Brooklyn. They returned to central Missouri in the late 1860s. Strother renewed her ties to the Lynchburg area as a young college graduate in the early 1880s, connecting in particular with her uncle Robert Withers Morgan (1844-1904), a prominent physician and father of future painter Georgia Weston Morgan (1869-1951).

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In addition to her work on behalf of NSDAR, Strother (1858-1938) was a founding member of the Lynchburg Woman’s Club and its first president; belonged to the American Association of University Women; sat on the first governing board of Jones Memorial Library; and served as a hostess at the Virginia Building at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.

 

A graduate of the School of Oratory of Boston University, Strother performed dramatic readings widely before her 1882 marriage and would offer private lessons in public speaking in the Lynchburg area for decades. She taught elocution at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, 1893-1896 and 1902-1904, and served as the first librarian of Jones Memorial Library, 1905-1908.

 

Roberta Lee Morgan Strother is buried with her husband, Lynchburg business leader and head of the Strother Drug Company, William M. Strother (1857-1899), at the city’s Spring Hill Cemetery.​