Carrie Eugenia Glenn and Lena Viola Glenn were two of ten children who grew up on a farm in the Crowders Creek section of Gaston County, North Carolina.  The family valued education, hard work, and self-reliance, producing a college professor, a prominent Gastonia surgeon, a prominent Lincolnton businessman, three teachers, a librarian, and a business school graduate who became E. F. Hutton's personal secretary.

Miss Carrie Glenn received an associate's degree in art from the State Normal and Industrial College for Women [The Normal] in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1906, a bachelor’s degree in education from George Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee in 1916, and a master’s degree in education from George Peabody in 1929.  She retired as elementary supervisor for the Gaston County Schools.

Miss Lena Glenn received a diploma in pedagogy from The Normal in 1908 and earned a master’s of library science degree from Emory University in 1920.  She taught school in Greensboro and Gastonia but spent the majority of her career with the Gaston County Public Library.  She retired as cataloguer at the Library.

The sisters were members of the First Presbyterian Church in Gastonia, North Carolina for most of their adult lives.  They never married and lived frugally so that they would be able to care for themselves in their later years.  In 1961, they moved from Gastonia to The Presbyterian Home, a retirement community in High Point, NC, where they lived the remainder of their lives. 

On August 30, 1971, the sisters established The Carrie E. and Lena V. Glenn Foundation as an indentured trust with an initial contribution of $25,000.  At their deaths, their combined estates, which totaled almost $2.9 million, were added to the trust. Since 1972, the Glenn Foundation has granted over $5.7 million to 230 tax exempt entities, the majority located in Gaston County.  On July 1, 2005, the Foundation changed its legal structure from an indentured trust to a non-profit corporation. Foundation assets today exceed $7 million.