Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890–1920
Biography of Mrs. Virginia Waymire, 1846-1926
By Nicholas Papazyan, Undergraduate, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Member of the Alameda Equality Club.
Mrs. J. A. Waymire was born Virginia A. Chrisman on February 13, 1846 in Missouri. She eventually settled in northern California in the late nineteenth after moving through Oregon.
Virginia Waymire was involved in the suffrage movement beginning in at least 1898 as part of the Alameda Equality Club. The San Francisco Call references a suffragette gathering at a residence owned by her and her husband, Judge James Andrew Waymire. According to History of Woman Suffrage: 1900-1920, Waymire is noted among many suffragette speakers and writers who were involved in organizing an event in Chico that attracted an audience of 3,000. She was also active in Oakland, as she was listed as a member of the “reception committee” in an Oakland Tribune advertisement for an event promoting women's suffrage.
She married James Andrew Waymire in 1865. Judge James Andrew Waymire, had a notable career as a lawyer, state assembyman , and sjudge in the Superior Court of California. It was only in 1920, a decade after her husband's death, that she answered the census with her full name: Virginia A. Chrisman. She was 73 at the time and lived in 290 Frederick Street in San Francisco.
Two years earlier, the San Francisco City Directory indicates that she may have resided in 162 Belvedere in 1918 -- the directory refers to her as “Mrs. J. A. Waymire” but also denotes her as a widow.
She died on June 2, 1926.
She had four children, Ray (1866-1871), Maud (1870-1944), Charlie (1873 - 1947), and Edna (1876-1960)
Virginia A. Chrisman was the spouse of Judge James A. Waymire.
Judge James Andrew Waymire; appointed to the Superior Court of California in 1881. He died in 1910.
Sources:
1880 United States Federal Census
Oakland Tribune, 15 September 1908
San Francisco Call, Volume 84, Number 151, 29 October 1898
San Francisco Call, Volume 107, Number 138, 17 April 1910
U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current
Harper, Ida Husted. History of Woman Suffrage: 1900-1920. New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922. [LINK]