Corbin's Animal Garden

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Corbin's Animal Garden

With historian and author Mary Kronenwetter

{This program is made possible by a grant from the "New Hampshire Humanities "Humanities to Go" program.}

In the late 1800s, the banking, railroad, and real estate mogul Austin Corbin returned to his hometown in Newport, New Hampshire. He built a grand estate and bought out his neighbors’ farms to create a 22,000 acre wildlife game preserve stocked with boar, bison, bighorn sheep, antelope, elk, Chinese pheasant, and other imported animals. The grounds eventually became a prestigious private hunting park and hosted illustrious guests including Theodore Roosevelt, the Prince of Wales, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Joe Dimaggio, Rudyard Kipling, and Augustus Saint Gaudens. This illustrated slideshow features archival images and a discussion of the complicated history and legacy of New Hampshire’s own American Gilded Age robber baron. The talk will also highlight the important legacy of the role the Corbin family and park naturalist Ernest Baynes played in the saving of the American bison from extinction.

Mary Kronenwetter holds a doctorate in educational research, policy, and administration and has held academic administration and teaching positions at colleges in the United States, China, and Japan. Upon returning to New England, she has worked at historical sites including Historic Deerfield, Enfield Shaker Museum, and The John Hay Estate at The Fells. Mary currently teaches for OSHER at Dartmouth and Adventures in Learning at Colby-Sawyer and has recently published the New Hampshire-based historical fiction, Pauper Auction.