Elisabeth Harvey Rowntree, always known as Tessa (1909–1999), was a British Quaker who worked in Czechoslovakia in 1938–1939 evacuating refugees who were fleeing from oppression by Nazi Germany.
Rowntree is known for escorting trainloads of refugees through German controlled areas to seaports in Poland and the Netherlands where they boarded ships to sail to Britain.
She was the second child and oldest daughter of Arnold Stephenson Rowntree (1872–1951), a Liberal MP, and Mary Katharine Harvey (1876–1961).
"[1] After a month in Vienna, Emmy Cadbury, a British Quaker, asked Rowntree to go to Prague, Czechoslovakia, to set up a Friends Center there.
On 14 December Tessa (or her cousin Jean) was at the Prague railway station to send off through Poland 150 wives and children of the men earlier evacuated.
The evacuation missions, passing through German-occupied Sudetenland and Danzig plus a nervous Poland were replete with risk and difficulty.
After returning to England, and during World War II, Rowntree worked with the Quakers relief society, was a founder of a women's section of the Friends Ambulance Unit, and assisted in the resettlement of East End Londoners whose homes were destroyed by German bombs during the Blitz.
She met an American, John Warder "Jack" Cadbury, who was working with the Quakers and in August 1942, they married.