Della Irving Hayden (ca. 1855-1924)

U-133

Della I. Hayden, educator, was born into slavery in North Carolina and moved to Virginia with her mother after the Civil War. She attended a Freedmen's Bureau school and graduated from the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton University) in 1877. She then served as a teacher and principal in Franklin and, for more than a decade, was “lady principal” of what is now Virginia State University. In 1904 Hayden founded the Franklin Normal and Industrial Institute to provide academic, agricultural, and industrial training to African American students. The school, renamed Hayden High School in her honor, moved into a new brick building here in 1953.

Department of Historic Resources, 2019

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Della Irving Hayden, “My Life Work,” The Southern Workman, vol. 38, no. 12 (Dec. 1909): 688-691. Della Irving Hayden, “A Graduates’ Reminiscences,” The Southern Workman (Jan. 1917): 59-63. U.S. Census, 1910, 1920. Della Hayden death certificate. Norfolk Journal and Guide, 7 Oct., 25 Nov. 1916, 3 June 1922, 13 Sept., 20 Dec. 1924, 14 May 1927, 28 July 1928, 6 June 1931, 27 Jan. 1952 L. A. Scruggs, Women of Distinction: Remarkable in Works and Invincible in Character (Raleigh, N.C., 1893). Tonya Dé Neé Blair, “Building Within our Borders: Black Women Reformers in the South from 1890 to 1920,” (Ph.D. diss., The University of Southern Mississippi, 2015). Yolanda Jones, “School in Franklin Helped Blacks,” Franklin Daily Press, 28 Feb. 1983. Hayden High School, National Register of Historic Places Nomination (2013). Stephen H. Cowles, “The 15 Most Influential People in Western Tidewater History,” Progress Magazine (27 Feb. 2016): 28-29.