For five generations, dating back to 1845, members of the Winslow family have ventured from North Carolina to Westtown School for a Quaker education—even during the Civil War, as sisters Margaret and Laura White did in the 1860s. 

“Westtown School is my family’s secret power, something that all Winslows have in common,” Ed Winslow ’64 says.  Ed and his brothers—Jim ’66, Bill ’73, and Bob ’74— followed their father, Edward C. Winslow, Jr. ’35, to Westtown. They, in turn, were followed by the fifth generation: Frank ’96, Michael ’99, Margaret ’02, Jane ’07, Ted ’07, and Pete ’08. All told, 23 members of the Winslow family tree have attended Westtown School. Moreover, the family has shared its “secret” with friends and neighbors in Greensboro and Tarboro, North Carolina. As a result, a number of other families have enrolled students at Westtown.

One branch of the Winslow family traces its lineage back to the Quaker whaling community on Nantucket in the 1700s; others to southeastern Pennsylvania. Over the years, they migrated south and west, to Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina. Ed’s paternal grandfather (and namesake), established E. C. Winslow Horses and Mules in Tarboro, North Carolina in 1913. The maternal side of the Winslow family has deep ties to Guilford College in Greensboro; one of their ancestors, Nereus Mendenhall, was the first president of the college. 

“Westtown faculty were huge influences on my father and my siblings and me,” says Ed. “Legendary teachers like Jan Long, Charlie Brown, Agnes Finnie, Fred Swan, Colonel Raiford, and so many others—they were deeply invested in their students.” It was only natural, then, that when the family sold timber from a farm they owned, they decided to give some of the proceeds to Westtown and, more specifically, to invest in the faculty who had invested so much in them. 

“My father was a quiet man, a modest man,” Ed reflects, “and he believed strongly in the importance of education. He wanted to name the fund for one of our ancestors who was an educator, but my brothers and I couldn’t see that. We went behind our father’s back and told former Head of School Tom Kaesemeyer to name it in Daddy’s honor. Tom never knew that he was the unwitting tool of a secret conspiracy.” 

“Making a contribution to the fund keeps our father’s memory alive.”

Over the years, family members (and others) have continued  to give to the fund. Ed says, “Making a contribution to the fund keeps our father’s memory alive.”

Every year, income from the Winslow Fund supports the professional development of Westtown faculty members such as Joseph Daniels, Chair of the Upper School History and Religion Department, who was named 2023-2024 History Teacher of the Year in Pennsylvania by the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History. Teacher Joseph says, “In my nine years at Westtown, the school has been instrumental in helping me attend conferences and participate in online courses, book discussion groups, and asynchronous training. These experiences have helped me keep up with the latest scholarship in my field, as well as student-life issues such as social-emotional learning and adolescent development, and they have widened my community of educators and colleagues at other schools. I always appreciate sharing Quaker pedagogy with others and letting them know how Westtown approaches learning on particular topics.”