MINOR, Virginia Louisa, reformer, born in Goochland county, Virginia, 27 March, 1824. She was educated in part at an academy for young ladies in Charlottesville, Virginia, married Francis Minor, a relative of the same name in 1843, and removed in 1846 to St. Louis, Missouri, where she has since resided. During the civil war she devoted herself to aid the sick and wounded soldiers in the camps and hospitals around St. Louis. She originated the worn-an suffrage movement in Missouri in 1866, organized the Woman suffrage association in 1867, and presided over the Convention of woman suffragists in St. Louis in 1869. She was the first woman in the United States to claim suffrage as a right, and not as a favor. With this end in view, in 1872 she brought the matter before the courts, taking it finally to the United States supreme court.