Harriet S. Iglehart

Harriet Austen Stokes was born in Baltimore, the daughter of John A. Stokes and Elaine Vandenberg Lord Stokes. Her father had a real estate firm,[1] and a dairy farm in Glencoe, Maryland where she lived as a child. Her kinswoman Anna Austen McCulloch founded the Oldfields School.[2]

Stokes graduated from Greenwood School in Ruxton in 1945. She attended Goucher College[3] before she married at age 19; she later earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in English literature in evening classes at Johns Hopkins University, in 1978 and 1981 respectively.[4][5]

As a girl, Stokes was a champion equestrian.[6] In adulthood, she ran a working farm, participated in equestrian events,[7][8][9] and wrote about equestrian and other topics for Maryland Horse, Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred, and other publications. She was also editor of the Elkridge-Harford Hunt Club newsletter for 23 years.[4] In 1972 she was appointed to a statewide commission to study cable television regulation in Maryland.[10]

Iglehart and her husband worked for racial integration in schools and for housing for veterans. Her husband was chair of the Baltimore County Human Rights Commission.[4] The Igleharts established the Francis N. “Ike” and Harriet S. Iglehart Fund, for civil rights and social justice causes.[11] In 1994 they gave "perpetual conservation easement" to their 316-acre farm in Monkton to the Maryland Environmental Trust, to maintain it as wetlands and undeveloped open space.[12] It was "one of the largest easements ever donated to the Trust in Baltimore County."[13] Iglehart supported and volunteered with many other causes, including the Maryland Historical Society,[14] St. James Episcopal Church,[15] the Oldfields School,[16] the Manor Conservancy, Ladew Topiary Gardens, Baltimore Tree Trust and Flowering Trails, Baltimore Actors Theater,[17] Baltimore Center Stage[18] and Planned Parenthood.[4] She was a member of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association.[19]

Harriet Stokes married lawyer and World War II veteran Francis Nash Iglehart Jr. in 1947.[20] They had five children,[21] and moved to their farm in Monkton in 1958.[22] Her husband died in 2007; she died in 2021, aged 94 years, from heart failure, at her farm in Monkton.[4] There is a Francis & Harriet Iglehart Professor of Law named chair at the University of Maryland, named in their honor.