Abby Manly Gwathmey

Abby Manly Gwathmey was the third president of WMU and served from 1894 to 1895. A very poor widow with several dependent children, she worked as a bookkeeper for the Foreign Mission Journal from 1887 to 1890, making her the first officer of WMU to have been gainfully employed.

She took her ten-year-old twins to the 1888 founding of WMU in Richmond. While serving as president of Virginia WMU 1895-1903, she chaired the committee which drafted Virginia WMU's constitution and financial policy and instituted a system of quarterly reports from the associational WMUs to the state officers.