George Higginson (1833-1921)

He was born in New York to Bostonian parents and moved with them back to Boston in 1838. He was educated there in public schools and became a merchant with his uncle Henry Lee in the East Indian trade at Boston until the company failed. In 1860, he moved permanently to Lenox, Massachusetts, where he bought a "gentleman's estate" of 160-acres. He studied “practical farming” and by 1862 he had established a model farm and restored the 18th century farmhouse where he remained with his family for the rest of his life. In 1862, he married Lili Hazard Barker, grand-daughter of Jacob Barker, founder of the Exchange Bank of New York, and a first cousin of the celebrated Gilded Age author, Henry James. They were the parents of three children.