On November 8, 1970, the Virginia Randolph Home Economics Cottage was dedicated as a museum in memory of Virginia Estelle Randolph, a pioneer educator, a humanitarian, and a creative leader in the field of education.

This museum, the only one of its kind in the South, honors the memory of Miss Randolph, who for 57 years worked as an educator in Henrico County, molding and shaping the lives of girls and boys so they would become worthwhile citizens.

Virginia E. Randolph was born in Richmond, Virginia, on June 8, 1874, the third of four children of slave parents. At the age of sixteen, she was graduated from Richmond Normal School, now known as Armstrong High School.
After a short teaching experience in Goochland County, Virginia, she secured a teaching position with the Henrico County School Board and opened the old Mountain Road School in 1892. In 1908 Miss Randolph was named as the first Jeanes Supervisor Industrial Teacher by Superintendent Jackson Davis, Henrico County Schools.

March 30, 1908, Miss Randolph conducted the first Arbor Day Program in Virginia. On that day, she and her students planted twelve Sycamore trees, naming them for the twelve disciples. Some of the trees remain standing as living monuments, but over the years, some of the trees were lost to disease.

In 1976 the museum was named a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of Interior, National Park Service. The Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission designated the museum a State Historic Landmark and the original Sycamore trees were named the first Notable Trees in Virginia.

On visiting the museum, one is able to see, among other things, many of Miss Randolph's personal possessions and numerous photographs taken during her career as an educator.

Miss Randolph died March 16, 1958, and was later reinterred on the site which contains the museum.

In 1874, Virginia Estelle Randolph was born. She was an African-American educator, social worker and humanitarian.

From near Richmond, Virginia she was the daughter of former slaves Sarah Elizabeth Carter and Edward Nelson Randolph. The former owner of her mother (a professor at Old Richmond College) witnessed the marriage of her parents and was responsible for naming her and her three brothers and sisters. She grew up during Reconstruction, was a teacher by the time she was 16, and she became an internationally known authority on vocational education for Black students.

Randolph first taught in Goochland, in 1892, and she taught at a one-room Mountain Road School in Henrico County. Both are in Virginia. Besides academics, Randolph taught her students such skills as gardening, woodworking, and sewing. Her novel teaching methods at times brought opposition from parents who wanted their children to learn from books, but the county superintendent stood behind her. In 1908, Randolph was appointed the first Jeanes Supervisor Industrial Teacher, providing the first formal in-service teacher training anywhere in Virginia for rural Black teachers.

She improved industrial skills, education in general, in every one of the county's rural schools for Blacks. With the freedom to design her own agenda, she shaped industrial work and community self-help programs to meet specific needs of schools. To reach the 23 schools she supervised, outings that took up to three hours one way on often-rough country roads hiring a buggy and driver, an expense that consumed much of her salary; later she bought her own horse. She recorded the improvements made at each school under her program, the “Henrico Plan” that was sent to county superintendents throughout the South. Randolph's teaching techniques and philosophy were later adopted in Britain's African colonies. In 1915, the Virginia Randolph Training School was built.

Students enrolled from throughout the county. Since transportation was not provided Randolph often kept children in her Richmond home so they could attend. Some 59 children boarded with her. Randolph built separate dormitories for girls and boys. Students came to her school from as far away as New York. In 1929, fire destroyed the wooden Virginia Randolph Training School. A bigger brick school was built later that year and named the Virginia Randolph High School. Virginia Randolph died March 16, 1958. Currently, several education programs are housed in the Virginia Randolph Educational Center.