Notes for: Minnie Kendall Lowther

Rendered an invalid when thrown from a horse as a young woman, Minnie Kendall Lowther was called upon by the editor to become a columnist for a Ritchie County newspaper. The popularity of her treatment of local history led to the writing of "The History of Ritchie County," published in Feb 1911. In about 1920, she went to Washington DC and was a reporter for several West Virginia newspapers. She used the pen name "Evangeline" in her work. Intended as a sequel to her first book, an incomplete manuscript that she worked on until her death was later completed by Barr Wilson and other Ritchie County historians and published by the Ritchie County Historical Society in 1990 as "Ritchie County in History and Romance." Genealogists and all students of local Ritchie County history owe Minnie Kendall Lowther and those who followed her an immense debt of gratitude.