(1889-2 Jan. 1977), secretary, political wife. (Violet Pollard, Violet E. Pollard) Born in Maxville area, GC, presumably at her parents’ home. Parents: Peter P. MacDougall, who operated a flour mill in Maxville, and his wife Ellen Robertson. Their home was on Lots 11 and 12 in the 17th Concession of Indian Lands, GC. Peter P. MacDougall died in 1903 a few years before the age of 50, and his wife outlived him for nearly half a century to die in 1950. Violet MacDougall attended Alexandria High School and taught school. The belief that she attended Regina College (now the University of Regina) at Regina, Sask., may be correct, but a search in 1997 failed to recover her name in the college records. Also, the suggestion that she studied at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ont., is evidently incorrect. It has not been possible to check from the records whether or not, as has been claimed, she studied law at George Washington University, Washington, D. C. Fairly early in her career, she was a secretary in Richmond, Virginia, to LeRoy Hodges. Remembered, evidently, with the title of Col., he was an “economist,” and of substance enough to have his own entry in Who Was Who in America (Vol. 2, p. 256).

     From 1918 to 1933 she was executive secretary to four successive governors of Virginia: Westmoreland Davis, E. Lee Trinkle, Harry F. Byrd, and John Garland Pollard. All these governors belonged to the Democratic Party. In July 1933 she married the fourth of these governors, John Garland Pollard. John Garland Pollard (Aug. 1871-28 April 1937) was a lawyer and author, and a reforming, progressive-minded governor with a reputation for integrity. Not being a man of strongly-independent mind, and accepting the reality of Virginia politics, he allowed his administration to remain to some degree under the influence of the previous governor, his friend and patron Harry F. Byrd. Pollard’s first wife, by whom he had several children, died in 1931; there were no children by the marriage to Violet MacDougall. The marriage to Violet MacDougall was a late marriage for both partners; there presumably was little by way of publicly-visible courtship leading up to it, for it is described as having taken place “to the surprise of even members of his family.” (Hopewell) As governor from Jan. 1930 to Jan. 1934, John Garland Pollard had to deal with the first impact of the Depression on Virginia. Though himself an old campaigner for the “dry” cause, he accepted the repeal of prohibition in Virginia under his administration. By the terms of the state constitution, he was unable to run in 1934 for a consecutive second term. After leaving the governorship, he served in Washington, at the nomination of President Roosevelt, as chaiman of the U.S. Board of Veterans’ Appeals.

     As her long-held position as executive secretary suggests or demonstrates, Violet Pollard was a woman of force, reputation, influence and achievement in her own right, quite apart from her role as a governor’s wife. From 1940 to 1968, she was a Democratic national committeewoman from Virginia. She was associate director for some 16 years of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Governor Pollard was one of the founders of this museum, and Mrs Pollard was also involved in its organization. Also, she was president of the Women’s Club of Richmond, Va., and vice-president of the Historic Richmond Foundation. In 1961 she was named co-chairman of a committee which the Democratic National Committee established to win greater party support among older people. For a two-year period after her husband’s death, she was secretary to the assistant administrator of the U.S. Housing Administration. She became an American citizen in 1934. In her days as a political secretary she appears to have been known as “Miss Mac.” Place of death: Lancaster, Va. Presbyterian. She was the sister of Ada Johnston, and her first cousins included Peter and Wilfred Kennedy, Prof. Frank MacDougall and Sir Edward Peacock.

     The Richmond Times Dispatch said in an obituary tribute, “She not only was First Lady of Virginia by virtue of her marriage to a governor, she also was surely among those women whose names would be in the top echelon in any compilation of Virginians who have done the most for their state during the mid-years of the 20th century.” The papers of Governor and Mrs Violet Pollard are in the Earl Gregg Swem Library at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, but as of the end of 1997 only the papers of the governor had been inventoried and catalogued.

Richmond Times Dispatch, 3 & 6 Jan. 1977, with portrait and editorial of tribute, & Glengarry News 27 Jan. 1977 * Campbell (1990), 499, 505, 588-591 * Maxville (1991) 631-632 * Queen's University Archives * University of Regina Archives * John S. Hopewell, “John Garland Pollard: a Progressive in the Byrd Machine,” in The Governors of Virginia 1860-1978, ed. Edward Younger et al. (1982), 247-260 (with portrait of Governor Pollard) * Bibliography of Glengarry 132