Grace Elizabeth Isabella Freeman (1869-1956) was the youngest child of Inglewood pioneer Daniel Freeman (1837-1918) and his wife Catherine (c. 1841-1874). A Canadian clan, the Freemans settled in the Centinela Adobe in 1873. Catherine soon passed away and Grace and her brothers Archie and Charles were raised by an aunt. Grace then spent some years in a Toronto girls’ school but returned by 1886. Two years after that, she married fellow Canadian Charles H. Howland. Her father gave them the adobe as a wedding present, as he had moved into his new mansion 1.5 miles east, but the Howlands eventually moved into the mansion as well. It was a childless union and they split around 1923. Grace Howland then became Inglewood’s greatest philanthropist, donating land and cash generously and often anonymously. An Episcopalian herself, she had a fondness for the Catholic Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and in 1946 she gave them nine acres for a hospital to be named in memory of her father. She would die in this very hospital, although her last address was the Freeman mansion – located on Grace Avenue, which was named in 1924.
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