Hannah Cheney Williams of Kennett Square

Hannah Cheney Williams, of Kennett
Square, died January 20, at her residence in Crosslands retirement community
where she had lived since 1989. She was in her 100th year.

Born in Manchester, Conn. to
Horace B. and Mary P. Cheney, members of the Cheney Brothers Silk Company,
manufacturers of fine silk products, Hannah attended Milton Academy and Sarah
Lawrence College where she worked closely with sociologists Robert and Helen
Lund on their research and the book, “Middletown in Transition.”

She was involved in the early
years of American documentary films working with Joris Ivens and Ernest
Hemingway on the film, “Spanish Earth” (1937) and other projects in the active
photography world of New York in the 1930s. After her marriage to Byard
Williams in 1939 she was involved in civic projects in New York City including
the establishment of Wave Hill, the arboretum and education center on the
Hudson river and co-founding the Riverdale Outdoor Laboratories, one of the
earliest educational programs to bring hands-on ecology and natural resource
education to inner city school children. She had a life-long love of
mountains, especially the Adirondacks, fostered by her family summers in Keene
Valley, NY.

She is survived by her children
Owen (and his wife Martha) and Timothy (and his wife Janet) WIlliams and Ann
Lane, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers donations
may be made “in memory of Hannah C Williams” to: the Adirondack Council, P.O.
Box - D2, Elizabethtown, New York 12932 (www,adirondackcouncil.org),
Kendal-Crosslands Communities, P.O. Box 100 Kennett Square 19348 (note it’s for
the Employee Appreciation Fund), or Planned Parenthood of Southeastern PA, 1144
Locust St., Philadelphia, PA 19107.

There will be a memorial
service at Crosslands sometime this spring.

Condolences and memories can be
shared at www.griecocares.com.

Arrangements by the Kuzo &
Grieco Funeral Home, Kennett Square.

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