George Bucknam Dorr, known as the “Father of Acadia”, was the founder of the oldest national park east of the Mississippi River. The roots of George B. Dorr’s land conservation achievements are deeply embedded on the Jamaica Pond shoreline where he was born in 1853. Childhood exposure to other Massachusetts landscapes also shaped his later success on the mid-Maine coast. Throughout Dorr’s life, notables with attachments to Jamaica Plain–Charles S. Sargent, Edith Wharton, Francis Parkman, Ellen Swallow Richards, Henry & Charles P. Bowditch, Margaret Fuller, and Charles Eliot–kept the Father of Acadia National Park tethered to the place where he spent the first decade of his life. Speaker Ronald H. Epp is the author of Creating Acadia National Park: The Biography of George Bucknam Dorr and has spent the last two decades researching the Massachusetts families that influenced the development of conservation philanthropy.
Fee Free, but registration required. This October 8 lecture begins at 2 pm in the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum. Offered in collaboration with the Jamaica Plain Historical Society. Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.