LILLIAN McGUIRE
Lillian H. McGuire, retired educator, researcher, and chronicler of Essex County’s rich African-American History, has passed away. She was 96.
A Middlesex County native, Mrs. McGuire — the daughter of Howard Garfield Hill and Malissie O’Neal Hill — graduated from Essex County’s famed Rappahannock Industrial Academy and earned a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in education from Morgan State University in Baltimore in 1951.
She began her career as an educator in Richmond County. After 13 years there, she joined the Essex County School System where she taught for 23 years. Her primary areas of teaching were social studies and language
She also taught adult education for five years with the Essex County Adult Education Program and with the Rappahannock Community College Adult Education Program.
Mrs. McGuire’s research of local African America history was published in a variety of books with her most celebrated work being 2000’s “Uprooted and Transplanted: From Africa to America, Focus on African-Americans in Essex County, Virginia, Oppressions, Achievements, Contributions, the 1600s- 1900s.”
In 2021, the Essex County Museum and Historical Society (ECMHS) sponsored a reprint of the book, which documents the course of the African-American experience in Essex County. The organization sponsored an event that year celebrating Mrs. McGuire’s contributions to recording Essex County history.
In a statement read by her daughter Gina at the ceremony, Mrs. McGuire noted: “Some people write books to get rich, and they succeed. And then there are people who write books because they see a need, and they believe that they, too, can make a difference. I am among those persons. I did not write my book to get rich, for I financed my first book publishing myself, and only retrieved the cost that I originally put in the book.
“I wrote my book because along my journey of travelling life’s highways, I’ve seen many needs concerning African-American matters. For example, in my elementary school days, I wasn’t aware of racial issues, but as I’ve traveled along the way as an adult, I found out that they existed. During my elementary school days, textbooks were void of African-American matters, and African-American studies were relegated to one week which was called Negro History Week. Eventually, the name was changed to Black History Month, and its celebrated in the month of February.”
Mrs. McGuire has been the recipient of a number of honors and awards including the 2010 Essex County Museum History Preservation Award and the 1974 Outstanding Elementary Teacher of America Award. In addition, she has received recognition from the Southside Rappahannock Baptist Association, the Baptist General Convention of Virginia, the First Baptist Church of Tappahannock and Union Shiloh Baptist Church, Middlesex. In 2006, she was honored with a book signing at her alma mater, Morgan State University in Baltimore.
Her civic activism included membership in the NAACP (she joined in 1950), president of the Essex Education Association, historian for the Rappahannock Industrial Academy Alumni Association, charter member of the Middle Peninsula African- American Genealogical and Historical Society, and board member for the Essex County Museum and Historical Society.
Mrs. McGuire was also a frequent contributor to the Rappahannock Times.
In 1957, she married Charles Edward McGuire, a prominent Baptist minister, and they raised three daughters.
Mrs. McGuire wae a member of First Baptist Church in Tappahannock.
In 2018, she was among the first eight female deacons to be ordained in the 151-year history of the church.
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