Virginia “Ginny” Bergman Peters was born on March 13, 1918 in Lac Qui Parle, Minnesota to Samuel Oscar and Ruth Caroline Bergman. In 1941, she graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.S. in English and Journalism and taught English for Appleton Public Schools until 1943.

She married J. Shelton Peters on April 27, 1946 and relocated to Northern Virginia where she took a job as a research analyst for the Department of Defense in Arlington, Va. from 1951-1955. In 1956, she began a long career with Fairfax County Public Schools teaching elementary school until 1961 and high school from 1965-1971. Peters later taught classes at the college level and tutored at Belvedere Elementary School and Graham Road Elementary School. In 1965, she received an M.A. in Anthropology from George Washington University.

In 1968, she directed Woodson High School students in the archaeological excavation of Dranesville Tavern and the renovation of the Legato School. Along with Tony Wrenn and Edith Sprouse, Peters co-authored the report Legato School: A Centennial Souvenir and she was instrumental in acquiring the funding for its publication.

In 1979, Peters published The Florida Wars, which chronicled the little known forty-eight year history of armed conflict between the U.S. Army and the Seminole Indian nation. Her book won the Florida Historical Society’s 1980 Rembert W. Patrick Memorial Book Award. In 1995, she wrote a second book, Women on the Earth Lodges: Tribal Life on the Plains.

Peters first joined the Fairfax County History Commission in 1974 and became its archaeological authority. As a member of the History Commission, she was active in trying to establish the site of the 1742 Fairfax County Courthouse. She worked with American University’s Department of Anthropology to conduct excavations of the courthouse site in 1974. In 1977, she helped form the Ad Hoc Cultural Resources Survey Committee of which she served as its chairman. She later served as Chairman of the History Commission from 1982-1984 and resigned in October 1998.