Helen Timmons Henderson, born in Missouri and raised in Tennessee, was one of the first two women elected to Virginia’s General Assembly. She and her husband moved to Council in 1911 when the Baptist State Mission Board of Virginia recruited them to oversee the new Buchanan Mission School. Local Democratic Party officials encouraged Henderson to run for the House of Delegates, and she was elected in Nov. 1923 to represent Buchanan and Russell Counties. An advocate for education and road improvements, she was renominated in 1925 but died before the fall election. Her daughter, Helen Ruth Henderson won the seat in 1927.