Our Rural Heritage: Dairy Farm of Distinction Hill Top Farm

When we remember the legendary Dorothy Holt, we usually don’t associate her role here in Hampton as having any sort of agricultural roots. Known to us as “the White Tornado”, or the town’s “Welcome Wagon”, she was one of the most civic-minded individuals we’ve ever known. Republican Town Committee Chairperson and Registrar of Voters, she was very involved in local politics. She was a pillar of the Congregational Church, and Holt Hall is named for their contribution. Active in all social aspects of the community, she was especially invested in the Little River Grange, where she organized holiday parties for all of the town’s children and served as “Matron of the Juvenile Grange. Everyone went – it was bedlam! Sometimes sixty, seventy kids! They all came because they were fed pretty well,” Dorothy explained in Hampton Remembers.

James and Janet Robertson described her in All Our Yesterdays as “an elegantly dressed lady replete with stockings and high-heeled shoes…friendly, interested, kind, and bossy, all at the same moment.” On this first encounter, she was trying “to get our names, our children’s names, and our birthdays to include in the town-wide Grange birthday calendar for the next year, and to sell us copies of that calendar. We bought. No one could resist Dorothy Holt.” It was Dorothy who collected all of those names and dates for the calendar, and it was Dorothy who sent every single person in town a card for their celebrations – birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, weddings. Jack Holt, who served as a First Selectman for 15 years, drove every bride in town to church in his 1920 Rolls Royce. “It was fun to get out the old Rolls Royce that I got years ago for $225 and take brides to the church in it,” he relayed in Hampton Remembers.

We also associate the Holts with Still Pond, formerly the Curtis Tavern, the elegant 18th century inn that the Holts lived, and entertained in, for most of their years here. Later, they would build a more accommodating home on North Bigelow; and Dorothy’s mother, Mrs. Porter, also had a residence in Hampton, Hill Top Farm, which returns us to the subject of agriculture.

With houses in Kentucky, New Jersey, and West Hartford, Mrs. Porter wanted another one close to her daughter when she purchased the property shortly after Dorothy and Jack left Europe prior to World War II to settle in Hampton. What Mrs. Porter acquired was a 1740 Cape and a cattle farm. One of the town’s oldest, the house faces south, which is the custom of 18th century homes, and Mrs. Porter would extend the structure extensively to its north, transforming it into one of the town’s most elegant homes. She also continued to raise cattle, with Bill Stocking serving as Hill Top Farm’s manager. Many of the town’s youth worked on the farm, among them Joe White, Orrin and Ralph Hosford, Jimmy Estabrooks, Mark Latimer, Anthony Burell, Bobby Pawlikowski, Don and Bob Inman.

“I remember the milking room where there were all of these awards on the walls. There was a stainless steel tank, a wash sink, and a communal ladle hanging on the wall — everyone coming in from work drank from it,” says Bob Inman, who started working at Hill Top Farm when he was ten for 15 cents an hour. “I was able to buy a little motorcycle with the money I earned there. I worked in the egg room, downstairs under the house where there was a conveyor belt, sorting and grading eggs.” Bob remembers the spectacular garden with its wrought iron tables and chairs and a wrought iron bench circling a large tree. “Bill Stocking was a horticulturist and he cultivated exotic plants in the greenhouse — he used to bring my mother a night blooming cereus. Mrs. Porter would come to Hampton after the Kentucky Derby and everything had to be perfect. There was an enormous rose garden in back and the roses were all in bloom the day she arrived.”

“They raised registered Guernseys. By the time I went to work, the herd was pretty much depleted, but they still milked one or two cows for Mrs. Porter and some other employees to have milk,” Anthony Burell remembered. “I worked mostly with Bill Stocking and Joe White, worked on haying, other field work, lawn mowing, cutting firewood and kindling, worked in the vegetable gardens, picking and grading eggs. Mrs. Porter always made it a point to say hello, and check on my well-being. I also washed and waxed all three of her cars. I enjoyed working for her.”

“I remember my brother sometimes had to walk to and from work at Hill Top Farm,” Susan Latimer Perez recalled. “His boss, Bill Stocking, drove by him one day and stopped to ask if he was tired of walking. Mark said ‘Yes’, and Mr. Stocking said, ‘Run a while’ and drove off. He waited down the road a bit to give him a ride.”

From a 1958 Willimantic Chronicle article, Hill Top Entry Wins Guernsey Award:
Hill Top Farm’s falcon Sputnick was the grand champion award winner in the Guernsey class at the 109th annual exhibition of the Windham Country Agriculture Society held at the Brooklyn Fair Grounds over the weekend. The two-year-old registered animal took the first prize in its class as well as the senior championship ribbon as well as the grand championship. Last year, the same animal took the first place ribbon in the senior heifer yearling class and the female junior championship. Other entries from the farm, which is managed by W. Clark Stocking for Mrs. G. Rupert Porter of West Hartford, were Hill Top Deershorn Starlight, winning the heifer calf first prize and the junior championship. The entries combined to take first prize for the best three females, also. They also received a second prize for the heifer calf, junior yearling and senior yearling entries. Orrin Hosford, Robert Pawlikowski and Mark Latimer were in charge of showing the animals at the farm, and Hosford and Joseph White share the herdsmen’s responsibilities at the farm, which is located on Route 97. The herd has been building up since 1952 to a point where there are now over 50 head at the farm.
The photograph’s caption, picturing Bobby Pawlikowki, noted: “This is the second year Mrs. Katherine Porter, owner of Hill Top Farm, has entered stock in fair competition.

The Willimantic Chronicle also recognized the societal role of Mrs. Porter and her family, the one with which we are more familiar:
State Representative and Mrs. John E. Holt, shown at the extreme left, take time out for a bite to eat at the annual meeting of the Holt Association of America at their Hampton home, Still Pond. The association began when the late Hamilton Holt, father of Representative Holt, began contacting people of the name listed in telephone directories in cities throughout which he traveled.

Family members in attendance, descendants of Nicholas and William Holt who came to the colonies in 1637, were from as far away as Edinburgh, Scotland — John Butters (which explains the kilt) pictured playing croquet with (Jack and Dot’s son Tony’s wife) “Mrs. Hamilton Holt II” (known to us in Hampton as simply “Kay”). The third picture is of “Mrs. G. A. Porter” and her cousin.

Louis Chatey, who posted the newspaper clippings in Hampton Remembers the Second Half the of the 20th Century writes: “Probably my most vivid memory of Mrs. Porter was her being driven to the General Store by her chauffeur wearing a dark suit and driver’s cap. The car was a large black station wagon with Hill Top Farm painted in small gold cursive letters on the driver’s door.”

“Mrs. Porter also had a home in Kentucky,” Ralph Hosford recalled. “She and her daughter, Dorothy Holt, would go there for the Kentucky Derby. Bill Stocking would drive them.”

John Osborn remembered “A very interesting lady. I remember visiting Mrs. Porter and having some wonderful discussions. My mother read us Cheaper by the Dozen when we were quite young. I don’t know how we got on that subject, but Mrs. Porter told me that she had a home in New Jersey and while there, had been Sunday school teacher to some of the family from the book.”

Sue Hochstetter’s mother, Alice Mathews, assisted Mrs. Porter as a personal secretary in her later years. Sue remembers “sitting in a house very different from mine, and decorated very differently than mine. I was told to ‘Sit in this chair and be quiet,’ while this little old lady dictated to my mother in such a business-like fashion.”

“She was, I think, a quite formidable and very social lady and gave all kinds of teas and parties,” current owner Sonja Larsen relayed. “She had a full time gardener with a helper so I’m sure the many borders here were a fine sight to behold. In winter, she turned the pond into a skating rink for her grandson, Tony Holt, and his friends.” Mrs. Porter’s gardens were, indeed, legendary, as was her love for her gazebo, which sits on top of the hill rising behind the house like a sentinel; there can be few places that provide as splendid a view or as romantic a setting. Bob Inman recalled picnicking at the gazebo, which they called ‘the lamb’s nest’. “In her olden days Mrs. Porter loved to be driven up to the gazebo for the view she enjoyed so much,” Sonja said. “Legend has it that she died one day in the car coming back down the hill.”

After Mrs. Porter’s death at the age of 93 in 1969, the old cow barn burned down and was replaced by the next owner with a horse barn, according to Sonja. The home continued on as a “summer residence” to families until the Larsens purchased it in 1979.

Though there are no cows, horses or chickens, the barn stands, and the greenhouse, the house is still magnificent, as are the walled gardens, the gazebo presides on the hill, and while Mrs. Porter’s final resting place was Kentucky, her daughter is buried at the North Cemetery here in Hampton, where her indelible mark on our community remains.

Dayna McDermott