Elinor Wise Curry (28 September 1903–25 October 1995), Presbyterian lay leader, was the daughter of Carrie Wise Curry and Lucien Ralston Curry, a bookkeeper and later a realtor. Soon after her birth in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, the family moved to Richmond, Virginia. Curry attended the Collegiate School for Girls and the General Assembly's Training School for Lay Workers, Inc., a Presbyterian institution that trained women for a vocation of church work. Later known as the Presbyterian School of Christian Education, Inc., it federated in 1997 with Union Theological Seminary in Virginia (later Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond). After graduating in 1925, she spent nine months operating synod Bible schools in Mississippi. She never married.

Curry returned to Richmond and accepted a position as director of Christian education at Ginter Park Presbyterian Church. Exposure to the plight of African Americans at home and in Mississippi prompted a life of activism and powerful concern. By the 1930s she was working to combat racial discrimination and volunteering at the 17th Street Mission, a ministry in Richmond's East End that students at the Union Theological Seminary had organized in 1911 to help local African Americans. Curry encouraged members of her church to become involved with the mission. Many of them, along with students from Union Theological Seminary and the Training School, experienced their first interracial contacts and developed friendships as a result of her efforts.

In 1945 Curry resigned from the Ginter Park Church over differences with some members who opposed her mission work. For the next year she was an assistant dietician in the dining room at Saint Philip Hospital, a facility for African Americans at the Medical College of Virginia, while she continued volunteering at the 17th Street Mission. She sponsored a weekly fellowship supper, taught classes, conducted a reading room, arranged entertainment, and provided support for the mission's clients. Curry's work there led Presbyterian Outlook to recognize her in January 1946 as one of ten notable Presbyterians. The Hanover Presbytery, the church's governing assembly for central Virginia, hired Curry in 1947 to take charge of the mission. As a result of her efforts to organize an official church, in 1952 the 17th Street Mission became Eastminster Presbyterian Church. Curry served as Eastminster's director of Christian education and at the time of her retirement in 1969 was director of church and community services. In 1963, a year after the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. voted to allow women to serve in a variety of church offices, Curry became the first woman elected elder in the Hanover Presbytery (later Presbytery of the James). In 1972 she was elected the presbytery's first woman moderator.

In retirement Curry became a member of All Souls Presbyterian Church, which she helped organize, and was a part-time coordinator for the Volunteers-in-Education program in the Richmond public schools. Believing strongly that the church should capitalize on the abilities and experience of its older parishioners, she served in 1975 on a committee at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education charged with developing a curriculum specializing in ministry to the elderly. At various times Curry sat on the board of directors of the Capital Area Agency on Aging, the Richmond Community Senior Center, the Richmond Urban League, and the Young Women's Christian Association. She also served on the Model City Committee for the East End, the advisory committee for Upward Bound, and the advisory council for the Richmond Community Action Program. From 1977 to 1979 she chaired the Hanover Presbytery's division of Mission to Society.

In 1970 the president of the United States honored Curry with a certificate of commendation for exceptional service to others in her efforts to improve race relations. Five years later the Presbyterian School of Christian Education presented her with an award for faithful service. Elinor Wise Curry died in a Richmond-area retirement community on 25 October 1995. She donated her body to science, but her name is inscribed on her parents' grave marker in Union Cemetery, in Leesburg. Union Presbyterian Seminary annually recognizes congregations for effective work in their communities with the Elinor Curry Award for Outreach and Social Concern.

Sources Consulted:
Birth date in Social Security application, Social Security Administration, Office of Earnings Operations, Baltimore, Md.; Presbyterian Outlook (14 Jan. 1946), 6–7 (with cover portrait); Presbyterian Survey 59 (Jan. 1969): 13–15 (several portraits); Richmond News Leader, 3 Nov. 1972, 29 July 1978; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 17 May 1975; Church Educators of Hanover Presbytery, The Ministry of Church Education (video recording), including Curry interview conducted by Jeff Kellam, 21 Feb. 1983, Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, Va.; information provided by sister, Margaret Curry Worsham (2003); Robert P. Davis et al., Virginia Presbyterians in American Life: Hanover Presbytery (1755–1980) (1982), 203, 236–237, 260; obituaries in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 29 Oct. 1995, and Presbyterian Outlook (20 Nov. 1995), 24.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Janet B. Schwarz.

How to cite this page:
Janet B. Schwarz,"Elinor Wise Curry (1903–1995)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2006, rev. 2019 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Curry_Elinor_Wise, accessed [today's date]).

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