Eloise Cummings Simpson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 26, 1895, to Mary Eloise (Hood) and Robert Augustus Cummings Sr., an engineer. Simpson attended Vassar College (B.A., 1917), where she became involved with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an ecumenical Christian pacifist organization that stressed integration of the spiritual and social. She worked as the first Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) secretary at the University of Pittsburgh following her graduation. In 1920, Simpson moved to New York City, where she attended graduate school at Columbia University (M.A., 1922), and lived and worked at the Union Settlement. That same year, Simpson married William Gayley Simpson (1892-1991). The couple lived in various places, spending almost ten years with a group at Stepping Stones Farm in Long Valley, New Jersey, subsistence farming and weaving.
During this time she gave birth to her only child, Tom (1929- ). In 1931, she received her certification from Teachers' College (Columbia). In 1935 Simpson founded Spring Farm School in New Hope, Pennsylvania, to provide a child-centered environment that nurtured the whole child. The school eventually closed in 1938, and through the 1940s she taught at schools in Maryland and Massachusetts. Simpson and her husband parted ways at some point and eventually divorced. William continued on his own path, becoming a pro-white racial activist and author. Simpson eventually settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1948. Simpson's love of teaching continued throughout her life, and in 1962 at the age of sixty-seven, she traveled to Lucknow, India, where she spent the year teaching young women at the Isabella Thoburn College. She returned to Cambridge, where she took in boarders, meditated, and wrote on the relationship between spiritual development and the laws of nature, until her death in 1993.
From the description of Papers of Eloise Cummings Simpson, 1867-1993 (inclusive), 1940-1985 (bulk). (Harvard University). WorldCat record id: 681067974
