PARIS — The Parsons Farm Conservation Easement has been completed. Five years in the crafting, blending the desires and needs of three siblings, one cousin and their spouses, the easement will protect 230 acres of historic agricultural fields and woodlands in South Paris.

The easement, donated to the Western Foothills Land Trust by Cynthia and Lawrence Curtis, Jeffrey Parsons, Jerome Parsons and Margaret Weed, will protect a rare historic landscape from development and subdivision in perpetuity. The family’s extraordinary 1803 brick-ended farmhouse, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, while excluded from the easement, will benefit from the protection of its agricultural setting.

The easement provides for agricultural use of the farm’s prestigious fields, and continued management of the family’s forested acres. In addition, the easement will protect the undeveloped views of the fields and woodlands as well as the historic agricultural context for the magnificent 1803 house. Wildlife will benefit greatly from this protected land which provides habitat for a variety of land-based animals including deer as well as numerous species of birds, especially those which rely upon open fields for feeding and nest building. Town Farm Brook, a trout stream, originates on the property as well.

The original 100-acre core of the farm was purchased by a 21-year-old Stephen Robinson in 1787. Stephen attended the first town meeting called in Paris in 1793, and was named a surveyor of highways. Eventually he served as a selectman and as a school agent for the town, and was a founding member of the Paris Social Library. Prior to his death in 1825, he amassed a farm of 1000 acres, built two houses and three barns, raised 11 children and became the fourth highest tax-payer in Paris. The donors, who live in three states and Maine this time of year, are descendants of John Parsons Jr. who married Stephen Robinson’s daughter Apphia Robinson, and who purchased the Robinson farm in 1844.

At the time of the farmhouse’s bicentennial in 2003, Mary Parsons wrote a brief but thorough commemorative history of the farm and its inhabitants. A copy of this record, “The 200th Anniversary of the Robinson House in Paris, Maine (1803-2003),” can be found at the Paris Cape Historical Society in South Paris, the Bethel Historical Society in Bethel and the Maine Historical Society in Portland.

In addition, the farm’s early 20th-century agricultural history has been well documented in a book Jeffrey Parsons edited and published in 2009, “Life on the Farm and in the Village, South Paris, Maine 1920-1925.” The volume consists of essays written between 1950 and 1980 by Merton S. Parsons (1907-1982) about his memories of his early life on the farm. Rich with journal entries and photographs of the Parsons family, livestock and farm, the book gives an accurate historic record and a personable account of the transition all New England farms were experiencing as the internal combustion engine replaced draft animals. The book is available locally at Book ‘N Things, the gift shop at the Bethel Historical Society and at the Paris Cape Historical Society.

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