Ms. Holton, who declined to be interviewed, first moved into the Virginia executive mansion in 1970 as the 12-year-old daughter of Gov. A. Linwood Holton Jr., a Republican, and his wife, Virginia, known as Jinks. She enrolled at a prestigious grade school recommended to her parents by their upper-crust friends.

Many children at school wanted to attach themselves to her because of who her father was.

“She called them ‘Buggy Friends,’” recalled her brother Woody, because they were constantly bugging her to visit the mansion.

Status seeking, he said, was not a value instilled by their father. Instead, the children were roused from their comfortable beds every morning with refrains of “It’s opportunity time! Let’s go get ’em.” A Presbyterian, he gave each of his four children Bibles with underlined passages about the good Samaritan. The lessons stuck. When a lightning strike in 1968 killed the daughter of the sitting governor, Ms. Holton started the Becky Godwin Club in the girl’s honor. The club specialized in good Samaritan deeds, like playing with and raising money for a developmentally disabled girl down the block.

When a federal judge ordered the desegregation of Virginia schools, Governor Holton sent his children to Mosby Middle, an all-black public school. He also made sure to alert the news media.

“Dad is like Tim in this way,” said Woody Holton, a historian at the University of South Carolina and the author of an acclaimed biography of the first lady Abigail Adams. “They both are really good social justice people, but they also understand that you better call reporters.”

A photograph of Anne’s older sister, Tayloe, being escorted into the school by her father became an iconic image, though Woody Holton said she “was mad because Tayloe was becoming famous wearing Anne’s dress.”

At Mosby, Ms. Holton, then 12, showed a middle child’s talent for getting along with people, starting a cheerleading squad and making friends. She also gave a tour of the mansion to Anne-Marie Slaughter, another 12-year-old, who would go on to be a foreign policy adviser to Mrs. Clinton, and whose best friend was the daughter of the Democrat that Linwood Holton beat in the governor’s race. “She was very gracious,” Ms. Slaughter said.