Penelope Grenville (Hunter) Grant

SALISBURY — Penelope Grenville (Hunter) Grant, 95, died in Lyme Centre, N.H., at the home of her son, Michael, on Oct. 8, 2010.

The elder daughter of Georgina and George Grenville Hunter, she was born in Hartford and lived her early years in Schenectady, N.Y., and on Main Street in Salisbury.

Her father was half-brother to portrait painter Ellen Emmet Rand, and Mrs. Grant always had relatives and friends in the Salisbury area. Her sister, Ellen Turner, died several years ago.  

Mrs. Grant graduated from the Brearley School in Manhattan and attended Bryn Mawr College. She married Roger Whitman in 1934 in Salisbury’s St. John’s Episcopal Church, and her sons, Gren and Michael, were born in 1938 and 1940. That marriage ended in divorce. In 1946, she married Francis Grant. Her youngest son, Matthew, was born in 1954.

The Grants moved from New York to Boston in 1948 and to Baltimore in 1954. A devoted and perceptive teacher, Mrs. Grant tutored dyslexic children, was active in the Orton Society, and served as a faculty member of the Jemicy School. She loved to mentor younger women, tend her herb and flower gardens, read to blind persons, practice her French, read, knit, cook and solve crosswords.

To provide comfort and care for her mother, the Grants returned to Salisbury in 1979, and lived for 25 years in the house they built next to the bicycle path and Moore Brook at the north end of the village. They were parishioners of St. Mary’s in Lakeville, and often participated in local peace and disarmament vigils.

Mrs. Grant collected and printed a number of her father’s early 1900s photographs of colorful locals and they were exhibited in the Scoville Library. She helped to organize and operate the OWL’s Kitchen in Lakeville and was honored by the Older Women’s League as she “retired� from that vital activity.

Mrs. Grant is survived by her sons and by her daughters-in-law Janice Plotczyk and Lynn McRae;  three grandsons, Christopher, Tobin and Alec; and her devoted friend and caregiver, Lucy Lamson of Salisbury.

Memorial gifts may be sent to OWLs Kitchen.

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