John Henry Foster was born in 1926 and entered Westtown School, a prominent Quaker boarding school located in Chester County, Pa., in 1941. After graduating from Westtown in 1944, he received B.S. and Ph.D. degrees at Cornell and served on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, teaching Agricultural Economics. The John H. Foster papers, circa 1941-1999, include materials gathered by Foster during his three student years at Westtown School, 1941-1944, and later as an active alumnus of the Class of 1944.