A birthday celebration is set at the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site’s visitor center for tomorrow, and tours will be given for the rest of the evening. A commemorative program will begin at 1:30PM at Sharon Baptist Church. The program will feature presentations on the St. Luke Hall and on Mrs. Walker’s life and works as Right Worthy Grand Secretary of the Independent Order of St. Luke. In related news, historians have announced findings that Maggie L. Walker National was born in 1864, not 1867 as had been thought.

Historians at the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site say they now have sufficient evidence to show that pioneer banker Maggie L. Walker was born three years earlier than previously thought.

Walker, the first woman to charter a bank and a prominent figure in Richmond’s history, had listed her birth date as July 15, 1867. But recent research confirms a biographer’s assertion that Walker was born in 1864.

She may have made this up to identify more closely with the Independent Order of St. Luke, which was founded in 1867, museum curator Klydie Thomas said.