Hilda Pauline Holme (October 1, 1888 – March 6, 1960) was an American Quaker relief worker in Europe after World War I, and a book collector.
Early life
Hilda P. Holme was born in Salem, New Jersey, the daughter of Richard Henry Holme and Pauline Waddington Holme. Her parents were Quakers; her father was a dairyman, and her mother was a noted temperance activist and suffragist.[1][2] As a teenager, Holme served on a schools committee at the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends, along with her mother and older sister.[3] In 1910, following her mother and older sister, she graduated from Vassar College,[4] with further studies at Johns Hopkins University.[5]
Career
Holme worked in France and Poland doing refugee relief and agricultural reconstruction work with the American Friends Service Committee during and after World War I.[6][7][8] She spoke to American women's clubs when she was home in Baltimore about her work, sometimes sharing examples of typical Polish peasant clothing.[9][10] Some of the photographs she took while doing this work are in the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College.[11]
Holme's older siblings both died in an automobile accident in 1924.[17] She died in 1960, aged 71 years, at a nursing home in Lutherville, Maryland.[18] Her collection of European folk costumes was donated to the International Center at the West Baltimore branch of the YWCA, and displayed there in 1965 and 1975.[19][20] Her book collections became the Hilda Holme Book Illustration Collection at the Enoch Pratt Free Library,[21] and more than 100 of the illustrations are available through Digital Maryland.[22]
