Broadacres Legacy: The Story of Honora Haynes

By Alice M Sapienza

The place and its people—Honora, her immediate family and her extended family (students, friends, neighbors, etc.)—have become a community asset of Sudbury.

Why? The place is, at its simplest, land. But, this place also embodies the vision of its owner, the spirit of those who worked there, and the heart of a community.

As you will read, Honora and her siblings were raised by a fiercely intelligent woman who was born in Maine and graduated from Smith College in 1904. As a single mother in her forties, she adopted three unrelated children and imbued in them those virtues and characteristics that were most important to her.

When Honora was in her thirties, single, and also a college graduate (at a time when few women matriculated), she became determined to create a business. Almost wholly on their own, she and her sister worked the "Maenpaa Farm," turning it into a small equine breeding and training operation, and achieving a half-century of success that ultimately developed into Broadacres Farm, complete with boarding and growing to encompass several equestrian disciplines.

More importantly for our story, though, is Honora's influence. From her, children learned independence and responsibility; adults (mostly professional women) braved the physical risks associated with equine sports and gained life lessons: all who had contact with Broadacres experienced the joy and satisfaction of doing something they loved in an environment of unwavering support.

"Knowing Honora changed my life," was said often and earnestly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667859293

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Broadacres Legacy—The Story of Honora Haynes

© Alice M. Sapienza

October 2019

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Print ISBN: 978-1-66785-928-6

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66785-929-3

Foreword

This is a story about a place and its people, located in Sudbury, Massachusetts. The place was, for many decades, simply called the farm by its series of owners, which included the Hayneses, a well-known name in town and a family who had settled in Sudbury in the 1600s (but were not directly related to the subject of this book). In the 1920s, Finnish settlers worked this land, and it was their name on the title of the land that Honora Haynes—the focus of this story—purchased: a 70-acre parcel of fields, barns, and a farmer’s cottage.

The place and its people—Honora, her immediate family and her extended family (students, friends, neighbors, etc.)—have become a community asset of Sudbury.

Why? The place is, at its simplest, land. But, this place also embodies the vision of its owner, the spirit of those who worked there, and the heart of a community.

As you will read, Honora and her siblings were raised by a fiercely intelligent woman who was born in Maine and graduated from Smith College in 1904. As a single mother in her forties, she adopted three unrelated children and imbued in them those virtues and characteristics that were most important to her.

When Honora was in her thirties, single, and also a college graduate (at a time when few women matriculated), she became determined to create a business. Almost wholly on their own, she and her sister worked the Maenpaa Farm, turning it into a small equine breeding and training operation, and achieving a half-century of success that ultimately developed into Broadacres Farm, complete with boarding and growing to encompass several equestrian disciplines.

More importantly for our story, though, is Honora’s influence. From her, children learned independence and responsibility; adults (mostly professional women) braved the physical risks associated with equine sports and gained life lessons: all who had contact with Broadacres experienced the joy and satisfaction of doing something they loved in an environment of unwavering support.

Knowing Honora changed my life, was said often and earnestly.

From our vantage today, Honora exemplifies the scholar-entrepreneur. She was also an incredibly strong woman and a model of the good teacher (leading by supporting), good neighbor (honest, fair, giving), and good friend. Her half-century of success is encapsulated in a half-century of friendship that continues in all of us who knew her.

This can only be a partial story. There is much, still, we don’t know about the place and its people, the history and the travails. But what we do know about the life of Honora is a very interesting story…

Acknowledgements

Not even a short history of a place and its people can be a solo endeavor. Without the generous support of Elspeth (Beth) Davis, Honora’s closest friend—who came to Broadacres when she was seventeen years old, and sat by Honora’s side when she died in 2019—none of this would have been possible.

Beth allowed me to peruse all the albums she found, the odd boxes of letters and clippings and loose photographs, and the more recent albums of festive occasions. (I realized, in that perusal, the importance of labeling photos!) It took many months, with much iteration through photos and letters, to begin to piece together the outline of the story.

Another close friend of Honora’s was Diana Edwards, who also first came to Broadacres when she was about seventeen years old. Diana rode at the farm and became night barn staff, who checked in on both horses and humans after her day job as a professional CPA. To her, I am indebted for material on Honora’s sister, Tish (see Epilogue: Letitia Haynes, 1921-2005).

I also benefitted tremendously from contact with family friends (Herb Hartman and Tessa Davis) who knew Honora’s mother, and a neighbor (Betsy Wallingford), who met Honora not long after she and her sister moved to Sudbury. Herb filled in much about the Haynes’ life in Maine, particularly their beloved Rock Pond camp in the wilderness. He also provided current photographs of the original Broadacres in Vassalboro, Maine, after which Honora named her own farm.

Honora’s extensive group of friends also contributed. Lorna Grande found articles about Honora. Additionally, many dozens of unidentified others had written letters and cards for Honora’s birthdays over the years. All contributors, intentional or not, provided me with a consistent set of insights into the value of their relationship with Honora.

During the process of writing this story (which does contain some history, but is not history, and some biography, but is not biography), I often felt like an archeologist. My work included combing through past ephemera such as newspaper clippings from the 1880s and photos from the 1900s. There was evidence of great joy, great tragedy, suffering, and, always, perseverance. What has emerged is of course only a partial profile, and yet it still confirms the importance of understanding, knowing, and deeply appreciating the value of what Sudbury holds in the legacy of Broadacres and Honora Haynes. I am grateful to have been part of this story.

Contents

Part 1: The Beginning (in Maine)

The Haynes and Sturgis families in Maine

Augusta and Glenmere

Part 2: The Move to Massachusetts

Creating a new life

Finding joy

High school

Part 3: The Journey to Maenpaa Farm

Losing a son, losing a brother

From college to Millwood

Finding a mentor and friend

Part 4: The New Broadacres

The farm in Sudbury

Expansion of railroads in Sudbury

World War I and new immigrants

Building Broadacres

Creating the riding school

Part 5: Half a Century of Success

Expanding influence, expanding opportunities: 1960s-1970s

Breeding

Scholarship and advocacy

Training

Students

Fox hunting

Family

Regional and national renown: 1980s-1990s

Transitioning to dressage: the 2000s

The legacy of Broadacres

Epilogue

Letitia Haynes: 1921-2005

Muriel Haynes: 1882-1979

Notes

Part 1:

The Beginning (in Maine)

What is the legacy of a place like Broadacres Farm in Sudbury? The farm is the symbol, the physical manifestation of those who cared for it, loved it, and gave it their energy, time, desires, and dreams.

There are two Broadacres in the story of Honora Haynes. Each represents unique individuals who may have lived in different centuries, but who shared a set of characteristics that produced remarkable results. In Vassalboro, Maine, the first Broadacres was a renowned farm established in the 1790s and nurtured by generations of the Sturgis family. At the end of the nineteenth century, the farm was cultivated by Ira Sturgis, who was Honora’s great-grandfather. When Ira died, it continued to be developed by his son, Horace, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The farm was devoted to:

Scholarship: In the late 1800s, Ira studied the breeding of livestock, owned representative types of horses and cattle, and went to England to find the right shepherd for his prize flock of Hampshire sheep.

Education and training: A newspaper article from the 1920s noted that Horace (Ira’s son) was now owner of the largest and best equipped farm in the state and well situated to advocate for changes throughout the state both in agriculture (e.g., growing rapeseed for sheep forage in the winter) and in the care of sheep by a treatment that prevented infestation of grubs that would otherwise be fatal.¹

In Sudbury, Massachusetts, the second Broadacres was also renowned—similarly for scholarship, education, and training—but this time for the breeding, selection, and development of horses and riders to national standards. Thirty years after Ira’s son was promulgating innovations in Maine farming, his relative, the young Honora Haynes, bought approximately seventy acres on both sides of Morse Road in 1954. That parcel was called Maenpaa Farm, and it had been a working farm for probably two centuries, although the original tract of land was much larger and the owners different in the 1700s. A few years after Honora bought the property, she named it for the Vassalboro estate: Broadacres.

Certainly, in 1954, this purchase was unusual. Many might ask: Who was this woman, and what did she hope to achieve?

Although there are aspects of Honora’s life that remain unanswered, what we do know—even partially—about the above questions suggests a very interesting story. It begins with Honora’s maternal grandparents and great grandparents, who lived in Maine’s capital, Augusta, in the nineteenth century. A vital influence on Honora and her siblings was their mother, Muriel Haynes. Even the little information we have about Muriel suggests that Honora was much like her in terms of strength, independence, scholarly bent, and perseverance. Muriel, in turn, was much like her father (J.M. Haynes) and her maternal grandfather (Ira Sturgis) in similar aspects of character, as we will discover, and the Broadacres legacy essentially passed from