Carrie E. Glenn
1884 - 1977

"We did without many things that we might have had, but it has given us a lot of satisfaction to know that we could and did take care of ourselves without asking anyone for help. Our sole purpose in making this Foundation was to try to have any money that we might leave go where it is needed most and will do the most good."

- Carrie and Lena Glenn
March 28, 1973

Lena V. Glenn
1886 - 1984

Born in the 1880's, Carrie Eugenia Glenn and Lena Viola Glenn were two of ten children who grew up on a farm in the Crowders Creek section of Gaston County, North Carolina.  The family valued education, hard work, and self-reliance, producing a college professor, a prominent Gastonia surgeon, a prominent Lincolnton businessman, three teachers, a librarian, and a business school graduate who became E. F. Hutton's personal secretary. 

Miss Carrie Glenn received an associate of arts degree from the State Normal and Industrial College for Women [The Normal] in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1906 (today's University of North Carolina at Greensboro), a bachelor’s degree in education from George Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee in 1916, and a master’s degree in education from George Peabody in 1929.  She served as elementary supervisor for Gaston County rural schools for 15 years and retired as a third grade teacher in the Gaston County Schools. 

Miss Lena Glenn received a diploma in pedagogy from The Normal in 1908 and earned a master’s of library science degree from what is now Emory University in 1920.  She did not work for many years until she became employed with the Gaston County Public Library, retiring as the first cataloguer. 

The sisters were Presbyterians.  They never married and lived frugally with the goal of being able to care for themselves in their later years.  In 1961, they moved from Gastonia to The Presbyterian Home of High Point, a retirement community in High Point, North Carolina, where they lived until their deaths. 

On August 30, 1971, the sisters established The Carrie E. and Lena V. Glenn Foundation as an indentured trust with an initial contribution of $25,000. At their deaths, their combined estates of almost $3 million were added to the trust. On July 1, 2005, the Foundation changed its legal structure from a trust to a nonprofit corporation.  Since 1972, the Glenn Foundation has granted $9.801 million to 267 unduplicated organizations for 1051 different programs and services. Foundation assets today are approximately $7 million.