Born: June 16, 1862, Buffalo Lithia Springs, Virginia.
Died: August 25, 1915, Raleigh, North Carolina.
Buried: Oakwood Cemetery, Raleigh, North Carolina.
Fannie received the name Exile
in memory of her birthplace, to which her mother had fled from Morgantown, West Virginia, during the American civil war (in which Fannie’s lawyer father served as a lieutenant colonel).
After the war, the Heck family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. Fannie attended the Hobgood Seminary girls’ school there, and later the Hollins Institute near Roanoke, Virginia.
She taught Sunday School at the First Baptist Church in Raleigh, and went on to become vice-president of the Southern Sociological Congress, a member of the North Carolina Society of Social Work, president of the Woman’s Missionary Union of North Carolina (1886–1915).
She also served as president of the Baptist Convention’s Woman’s Missionary Union (1892–94, 1895–99 and 1906–15), and helped found the Woman’s Missionary Union Training School (later renamed the Carver School of Missions and Social Work), Louisville, Kentucky.