The “Hownells,” as the twosome were called, exercised quiet, but very effective leadership of the School through the cultural and financial upheavals of the First World War, the Roaring 20’s, the Depression, and the first days of World War II.

They deserve our attention and respect.

Recently a Quaker historian contacted us in Brownell House, seeking more information on Alice Howland and Eleanor Brownell in Santa Fe. We were reminded that these two quiet ladies were active among a famous group of Quaker intellectuals in the Taos/Santa Fe area.

Indeed, in the Courage for the Deed, Grace for the Doing, a history of Shipley, author Frances Stokes Hoekstra wrote of the two friends, “They moved West to Santa Fe where they were cherished in their community as extrovert Eastern radicals.” Oh, my!

In our attempts to research the Hownells, we came across an article from a 1929 Time Magazine. It misspells Miss Howland’s name, but her forceful, pioneering spirit shines through:

Teacher Tax Exemptions
Monday, Sep. 16, 1929

Glad were those few U. S. pedagogues to whom Income Tax is more than an academic subject, to hear of two precedents making them immune from certain taxations:
 
In the Pennsylvania Circuit Court of Appeals, Miss Alice Gulielma Rowland and Miss Eleanor O. Brownell, operators of the medium-fashionable Shipley School for girls at Bryn Mawr, Pa., were refunded $2,586.66 paid as income tax, although a lower court had ruled that the school was not a corporation entitled to “personal service classification.” The higher court ruled that because of the “close personal contact between the teacher and the taught,” the school’s “money income must be ascribed to the activities of the Misses Howland and Brownell, its sole stockholders, for without these two women’s daily, personal work, the school would simply shrivel and die. . . .”

—Tim Blankenhorn, Shipley Archivist