Leonore Hollander Papers

Leonore Beatrice Hollander was a noted chemist who worked in cancer research and devised an early diagnostic test for mononucleosis. A member of the Society of Friends, she was active as a member of the Indian Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting for 25 years. She had a deep interest in the history and culture of the Lenape, the Native American group indigenous to the Philadelphia area. She was an associate member of the United Lenape Band, a leader of the Lenape Land Association, and a friend of Nora Thompson Dean.

Leonore was born in Missouri in 1906, the daughter of Charles S. and Elsa Hollander. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1928. While she was at Bryn Mawr she became a member of Haverford Meeting. She met Franz Koehler at the University of Illinois and the two married in Prague in 1934. They moved to Germany the following year, but he was unable to find a teaching position because Leonore had Jewish ancestry. Unable to leave, the couple lived in Darmstadt through the War but were divorced sometime before 1946 when she and her two children were able to return to the United States. She worked at the National Institute of Health in Washington DC in 1947-48 then returned to the Philadelphia area to work in a number of research facilities including Fox Chase Cancer Center. She Leonore died in California in January of 2003.

The Lenape Land Association was established in 1967 as a non-profit educational and historical society dedicated to establishing a living memorial and recreation of Lenape life prior to European invasion. In 1973, it opened a model Lenape Village within New Britain Township Park in Chalfont, Pa., and attendant interpretation center and museum. Among the organization's major events was an annual Corn Planting Festival, and activities surrounding the Tricentennial of William Penn establishing the Colony of Pennsylvania in 1981-1982. In 1982, the Lenape Land Association folded, and all artifacts were placed with the Bucks County Conservancy.

Nora Thompson Dean (1907-1984), also known as Weènchipahkihëlèxkwe or "Touching Leaves Woman" in Unami, was one of the last fluent speakers of the southern Unami dialect of the Lenape language. She was born and lived Dewey, Oklahoma (near Bartlesville, on the Delaware Tribe of Indians reservation). She was raised in a traditionalist household, speaking the Unami Lenape language at home and practicing the Xingwikaon (Big House) ceremonies. She was generous in sharing her vast knowledge of Lenape language, religious ceremonies, social functions, dances, craftwork, herbal medicines, and other traditions. She taught classes, was consulted by academics, and established a business in 1967 that offered mail-order booklets and audiocassettes under the name Touching Leaves Indian Crafts.