Women's College in Greensboro, North Carolina, now known as the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, to take more advanced art classes. She also attended some courses at the Art Students League of New York. Every month during the school session, she would ride the train to New York City and stay for a week. She learned a great deal from these classes, and enjoyed her painting and experimenting with many different kinds of medium. She married Whitney Shumate on December 13, 1922. She said in her autobiography, "While I was going to school in Martinsville, I met a young man named Whitney Shumate. We started dating and went together for three years before we were married. The family teased me, because Whitney had a large car and when he came to Preston, Virginia to visit, always took me and a few members of my family for rides. When he bought a coupe, everyone said he was getting serious and wanted to leave my family at home when he took me for rides! It must have been true, because we were married on December 13, 1922." Whitney and Jessamine Shumate had two daughters, Ada Margaret S. Hadden (Mrs. William J. Hadden) and Jessamine "Jeppy" White S. Calhoun. Her grandson, Whit Haydn, is a noted magician and entertainer. Awards 1955- Award of Distinction, for her painting, "Joy", from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts bought one of her serigraphs for their permanent collection and several times she had paintings in their Traveling Exhibit. 1956- 1st Prize, Virginia Highlands Festival, for her painting, Soul Fluctuations. The Virginia Highlands Festival, in Abingdon, Virginia, began in 1948 and, over the years, has grown and flourished. Today it is one of the top 100 tourist events in North America and one of the top 20 in the Southeast- offering plenty of entertainment, an enormous antiques market, juried art and photography competitions, and a juried arts and crafts show, as well as nationally known writers, lecturers, and visual and performing artists. Received a Merit Award from the Association of University Women in Roanoke, Va., in 1956. She won a sterling silver bowl from the Piedmont Chapter of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts at the Martinsville, Virginia, "Piedmont Art Show" on May 12, 1962. The silver bowl is inscribed with "First Prize- Oil". Major works Historical Map of Virginia,