Smith family and Wolfe's Neck Farm papers

Lawrence M.C. Smith (LMCS) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1902. In 1933, he married Eleanor Houston (EHS). EHS was born in 1910, also in Philadelphia, into a family of many of the city's business, religious, and political luminaries. Together, the Smiths had six children: Lewis, Eleanor, Samuel, Sallie, Meredith, and Minie. LMCS worked in law and business in Philadelphia, and founded the city's classical music station, WFLN. EHS was active in the city's land conservation and historic preservation movements and was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania.

In 1946, while LMCS was working for the Roosevelt administration in Washington D.C., the Smiths purchased a tract of land in Freeport, Maine, as a summer residence. EHS was deeply interested in organic farming, and the family began exploring various methods of alternative agriculture on their new property. By 1959, the Smiths had incorporated the land as Wolfe's Neck Farm and begun organic cattle farming in earnest, having bought their first cows in 1953 and butchered their first animals for meat sales in 1956.

From the beginning, the Smiths operated the farm as both a venue for pioneering organic farming methods and a model for the ways that farming could preserve Maine's rural, coastal landscape. The two gradually purchased adjoining farms from their neighbors, establishing lease agreements for use of the land as long as the original tenants wanted to remain on their property.

Both LMCS and EHS were profoundly concerned with the need to protect and conserve land for public use and enjoyment and therefore engaged in various property purchases with the aim of establishing conservation easements or gifting the land to the state. Some of these endeavors, such as establishing Wolfe's Neck Woods State Park or the Mast Landing Sanctuary, were a matter of carving out and gifting their own property. Others involved intricate coordination with current landowners and the state, such as their leadership in establishing Popham Beach State Park.

In the early 1970s, the Smiths, with John McKee, established Landguard Trust to purchase land and establish conservation easements. While this organization did not endure, its mission influenced land trust efforts in the state, including the extant Maine Coast Heritage Trust.

LMCS died in 1975, having had a profound effect on the state's preservation of open space. EHS placed Wolfe's Neck Farm in a trust with University of Southern Maine (USM) before her death in 1987, a capstone to her legacy as an advocate of organic farming and devotion to land conservation. In 1997, USM turned the farm over to the Wolfe's Neck Farm Foundation (now Wolfe's Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment), which today operates the farm and manages the land.