Louise Hortense Snowden

Snowden taught medieval history at Wellesley College.^[3] She was a YMCA relief worker during World War I, first with the French army, and then with the American forces, managing hospitality sites in France and Belgium.^[1][4] She was elected president of the Women's Overseas Service League in 1923.^[5] She became chair of the World War Memorial Grove Committee in 1926, and dedicated a memorial grove of trees in Philadelphia that year.^[6] In 1930, the French government presented her with the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise for her wartime contributions.^[7]

Snowden was the first Dean of Women at the University of Pennsylvania, beginning in 1920.^[8][9] In 1922 she spoke on "The Place and Function of Cultural Studies in America" at a meeting of the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Liberal Studies.^[10] She resigned from the office in 1925.^[11] In 1929, she was in the first class of inductees into the university's Women's Hall of Fame, along with Margaret Center Klingelsmith, Gertrude Klein Pierce Easby, Anna Lockhart Flanigen, and Ida Wood.^[12]

Snowden died from breast cancer in 1931, at the age of 66, at a hospital in Philadelphia.^[13] The Cincinnati Museum of Art has a 1925 portrait miniature of Snowden, painted by Anna Margaretta Archambault.^[14]