Los Angeles County
Biographies
MISS
VIRGINIA LEE PRIDE
A well-known organizer and educator of international reputation, Miss Virginia Lee Pride is now a resident of Los Angeles and still is deeply interested in social and educational affairs. She was born in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Allegheny mountains in Virginia the daughter of Henry and Lavernia Ellen (Davis) Pride and received her degree from the University of the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. For twenty years she was a worker in the educational fields of South Africa, where she experienced many difficulties and dangers which were offset by the excitement and thrills of adventure. Her means of transportation were varied, the sea, camel caravan, horse, ox team, and even the American bicycle transporting her to various places where she lectured to English, Dutch and native peoples. She appreciated every experience and enjoyed writing about them.
For a number of years Miss Pride was head of English in Huguenot College at Wellington, South Africa, the only woman’s college in that country, established and maintained by Americans. She organized the La Rochelle, a school for the Dutch colonists, one of the largest and best known schools in that country. At Port Elizabeth she reorganized the Collegiate School for Girls, attended by daughters of British colonists and now recognized as one of the leading educational institutions of the Union of South Africa. Also she organized the South African branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and served as its first president, holding the office five years.
Miss Pride was a passenger on the first railroad train to reach Victoria Falls on the Zambezi and later wrote many magazine and newspaper articles of that trip. She also wrote of her travels in the big game country. She has traveled through Egypt, Palestine, Greece, Turkey and other countries collecting material for lectures and magazines. She visited Europe many times, spending a month or more in various places, for study and research. During the Boer war, she organized schools and classes for women and children in the Boer concentration camps and helped establish hotels for girls sent out from England as colonists.
In all of her travels, writings and lectures, Miss Pride’s greatest desire was to bring about a better feeling between the two white races who call South Africa “home” and who have the common task of civilizing and christianizing that “dark” continent. Today Miss Pride serves the California Women as instructor of the Better English department and as travel lecturer. She is a member of the Club’s advisory committee or Council of Gold, is a director of the Wilshire School of Coaching in correct English, travel, history of art and parliamentary law. Her residence is at 814 South Sierra Bonita avenue, Los Angeles, California.
Transcribed
2-11-12 Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: California
of the South Vol. II, by John Steven McGroarty, Pages
103-104, Clarke Publ., Chicago, Los Angeles, Indianapolis. 1933.
© 2012 Marilyn R. Pankey.
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