After earning her degree, Lydia Childs Eskridge (1907-2008) (BA 1930 Zoology) studied at Johns Hopkins University and then worked as a parasitologist at a New York City institute and later with a public environmental agency. As a hostess for the Holland-American cruise line, Eskridge often traveled to Europe, where she collected varied textiles. Thanks to the generosity of her daughter, Lydia Black, many of these objects were given to the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection. Lydia Black also facilitated a gift to fund a curatorial internship and the collection’s newsletter. The Lydia Childs Eskridge Foundation established the Lydia Childs Eskridge Fund in 2012, an endowment to support textile scholarship and promote the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection as a preeminent repository for historic textiles.