First Woman to Charter a Bank!
Maggie Lena Mitchell was born on July 15, 1864, on the Van Lew Estate in Richmond, Virginia, just before the end of the Civil War. Scholars believed that her birth year was 1867, until in 2009 documentation was found to the contrary, Census information, as well as a diary passage identified her year of birth as 1864. Her mother was Elizabeth Draper, a former slave who worked as an assistant cook for Mrs. Elizabeth Van Lew, who was an abolitionist, Unionist and spy for the Uni