09/01/2026
Elinor Kenney Farquhar
February 7, 1933 – August 1, 2026
Sandy Spring Museum joins Washington and beyond in mourning the loss of Elinor Kenney Farquhar, and in celebrating a life spent falling in love with history and refusing to let that love be passive.
Elinor was asking the questions historians ask long before it was her profession, long before it was even a plan. As an undergraduate, she went looking for the truth behind the Marshall Plan the only way she knew how: by finding the people who had actually built it and asking them herself. That instinct, go to the source, get it right, don't settle for the easy version of the story, never left her. It carried her through decades of devoted work with institutions entrusted with protecting the past, from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to Washington National Cathedral. And it carried her to us, to Sandy Spring Museum, where she became one of our most cherished major donors and champions.
Elinor understood something many people never fully grasp history does not preserve itself. A community's records, its buildings, its objects, all of it survives only because someone decides it's worth saving, and then does the work, year after year, to make sure it is. For decades, Elinor was that someone for us. Her generosity gave this Museum room to grow. Her belief in our mission gave us the confidence to keep pursuing it. We are who we are today in part because Elinor decided, again and again, that we mattered.
She leaves behind eight children: Lisa, Sarah, Marcia, Katherine, Douglas, Ned, William, and Witt; 18 grandchildren, and 17 great-grandchildren, each carrying forward a piece of her: her quick wit, her warmth, and her unshakable belief that once you set a standard, you hold yourself to it.
We are profoundly grateful for Elinor's generosity, her friendship, and her decades of steadfast support, for a life spent, in ways large and small, keeping history honest. She will be dearly missed by all of us at Sandy Spring Museum.
