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Unique Claims To Fame
Hildene Lincoln Family Home Manchester, Vt. By RAY BALOGH | The Municipal
The preponderance of reviews from visitors of Hildene, the Lincoln Family Home, reiterate one word to describe their experience: “beautiful.”
Robert Todd Lincoln’s Franklin Roadster was also used by Teddy Roosevelt as he traveled between Chicago and Milwaukee in October 1912 at the height of his campaign for U.S. president on the Bull Moose ticket. (Lee Snider/Shutterstock.com)
12 THE MUNICIPAL | DECEMBER 2020
The 24-room Georgian revival mansion, with a formal garden, observatory and 13 other historic buildings just outside Manchester, Vt., was home to Robert Todd Lincoln, the only one of the late president’s children who survived to adulthood, and his wife, Mary. He constructed the home in 1905, and members of the Lincoln lineage lived there until 1975, when Peggy Beckwith, the last surviving descendant to live at Hildene, passed away. She willed the property to the Church of Christ, Scientist with the stipulation the church maintain Hildene as a memorial to the Lincoln family. Shortly after the property was transferred, however, the church found the arrangement to be financial unfeasible and planned to sell Hildene to developers. When local citizens learned of the plans, they formed the nonprofit Friends of Hildene, fought a three-year legal battle to purchase the property, negotiated an acceptable price with the church and commenced in 1978 to restore the home and gardens. Robert (1843-1926) first visited Manchester with his mother and brother Tad in 1864 and developed an affinity for the place. He returned four decades later as president of the Pullman Company, then the nation’s largest manufacturing corporation, and purchased
