Howland, Elizabeth Lawrence (1885–1973)

1885–1973

Parents: Louis Meredith Howland (1855–1921) and Virginia Lee Lawrence (1864–1891).
Spouse: Frederic Kernochan (1878–1937).
Children: Virginia M. Kernochan (1911–1981) and Mary Kernochan (1914–1992).
Kinship: Fourth cousin once removed of the post–World War II Smith generation.

Early Life

Elizabeth Lawrence Howland was born in 1885 to Louis Meredith Howland and Virginia Lee Lawrence, uniting two distinguished New York families—the mercantile Howlands and the old Lawrence family of Long Island. She grew up largely in New York and Newport, in an atmosphere of transatlantic sophistication: her father was educated in France and Germany, and her step-grandmother, Louise-Marie Delaroche-La Perrière, was of an old French family.

Marriage

In 1910 Elizabeth married Frederic Kernochan, a lawyer and civic leader descended from an old New York legal family. The Kernochans were active in the city’s charitable and cultural circles, especially in the Episcopal Church and in the governance of Columbia University and St. Luke’s Hospital. Elizabeth shared these interests and divided her time between the city and the family’s country estate. She was remembered as a woman of refinement and dignity who maintained the cosmopolitan style of her mother’s Lawrence and Howland heritage.