Senior Julia Hood may seem like a typical Guilford student. However, beneath her curly black hair and wide smile, unlike the average Guilford student or even the typical legacy, Julia has 169 years of Guilford heritage running through her veins. Her family’s affiliation with Guilford is as old as the school itself, beginning when the New Garden Boarding School opened in 1837. Since Julia’s grandfather seven generations back told his daughter Sara English Blair, “Sara, thee must have some education,” the women of Julia’s family have attended Guilford.

“All of my siblings and all of my grandmother’s siblings went to Guilford,” said Julia’s grandmother Eldora Terrell, who graduated from Guilford and later became a member of the Board of Trustees. “We were just delighted to have Julia attend as well.”

Hood’s great grandmother Sara Richardson Haworth maintained a manuscript of each generation’s arrival at Guilford to help following generations understand the lives and times of their relatives.

The story begins with Sara English riding on horseback with her father, then moves on to a two-horse wagon and then to a train and finally automobiles.

It tells of the dresses and styles they wore. One describes a matron ripping off the beads of Sara English’s dress and telling her, “Thee can’t wear anything like that ’cause that’s frivolous here at New Garden Boarding School.”

It relates the hard times faced after the World Wars I and II and tells of them scrounging to send off Dora Blair Richardson, Hood’s great-great grandmother, with “a few chickens . and all the potatoes they could spare.”

Hood continued the narration of her arrival: “When I came to Guilford, we packed all my stuff into our Subaru wagon and drove a mile down the road to come here. I remember that there were people who knew who I was, though I didn’t know them, all the way through the registration line in Sternberger and the tent outside.”

The heritage goes beyond the women of Hood’s family, however. Her grandparents, Eugene and Eldora Terrell met at Guilford. Her mother, Sara Beth Hood, a recorded friend’s minister, met Hood’s father, Associate Professor of English Jim Hood, through the Guilford choir. In 1978 and 1979, the two lived in apartments designated for married students and their families who were returning from World War II.

Hood decided to attend Guilford while in her junior year of high school. Both of her parents worked at the college at the time.

“We moved around my whole life, so I kind of wanted to stay put,” Hood said. “My mom insisted that I didn’t have to go, but it had a little more weight.”

“We’ve been close as a family, but when she (Julia) or we (Jim and Sara Beth) need to do our own thing we always have that freedom,” Jim Hood said.

This balance of freedom and proximity continued when Hood traveled to London her junior year on a trip her father led. Hood, who was working at an art museum and living with other students, met the rest of the group only once a week for class. This enabled her and her father to have separate agendas, and yet see each other often.

“If there was a museum I was going to that I thought Julia might like, she was close enough for me to call and we could go together,” Jim Hood said. “We enjoyed London on our own terms, but also together.”

Jim Hood has enjoyed his daughter attending Guilford for other reasons as well, giving one example of his daughter taking his class and offering an immediate and ongoing student evaluation. He takes pleasure in watching Julia grow into adulthood before his eyes and says that he sees many of the same qualities in her that made him fall in love with Sara Beth.

“It’s been interesting to see Julia develop leadership skills and a secure sense of who she is in the world,” Jim Hood said. “I’m lucky too, because I don’t just see this firsthand, but I get to see how she interacts with others and the impressions she makes on them as well.”

This growth can be seen through Hood’s many endeavors at Guilford. She is a regular at morning worship in The Hut and College Meeting for Worship on Sundays. She’s a tour guide, works at the Academic Skills Center, and loves attending lectures on campus.

Hood is double majoring in psychology and art. Focusing on sculptures, she sparked an interest in becoming a museum curator during her internship in London. Although considering graduate school or the Penlin School of Craft, she has doubts that she’ll return to Guilford to teach.

“I’ve wondered if I’ll end up back here,” Hood said, “but it would almost be a little too much. I know I’ll continue to love Guilford as an institution, and I think I’ll always stay involved somehow.”

As her time at Guilford comes to an end, Hood is in the process of finishing her senior art thesis. The piece delves into her history at Guilford and examines the women whose footsteps she’s following, while discovering how they have helped shape the unique individual she is. It will open on April 21, and she encourages all to come see it.

“I’m very honored that she’s chosen her heritage and its importance to her as her project,” said Terrell. “The example that has been set for us (each generation) is that of leadership and strength through equality and comes more from Quakerism and our family than from being at Guilford.”

“I think it’s quite amazing that a young person can choose, on their own, to go somewhere so much of her family has been and where her parents then worked, and adjust so beautifully and not be stifled at all,” said Professor of Philosophy Jonathan Malino.

“Like with all students at Guilford,” Hood said, “the faculty was fair and waited to see who I was before creating expectations of who I am.