Mass Audubon: Cedar Pond Wildlife Sanctuary

During my trips to the North Shore several weeks ago, I visited many historic sites and took plenty of hikes. One of my stops was at Cedar Pond Wildlife Sanctuary in Wenham, MA. The scenic walking area is 158 acres (0.64 km sq) in size and is managed by Mass Audubon along with belonging to the Eastern Essex County Interior Forest Important Bird Area. Besides beautiful scenery and accessible pathways, the grounds contain the ruins of a mansion whose presence is more mysterious that it first seems.

The quiet trails include small wooden bridges and boardwalks through wetlands. Trail signs in English and Braille demonstrate the tree species found next to the trail, including white pine, eastern red cedar, and red oak. Despite its proximity to Meadow Pond, Cedar Pond, and smaller bodies of water, no parts of the trail were damp or muddy. Clear maps and trail markers prevented visitors from becoming lost.

The most historically significant portion of the area was the ruins of a mansion constructed around 1915 as the summer home for the family of Francis Lee Higginson, Jr from Boston. Like many of the wealthy elite who summered in Essex County, Higginson was part of the Boston Brahmin. His grandfather George Higginson and first cousin twice removed John Clarke Lee established the investment bank Lee, Higginson & Co. His father, Francis Lee Higginson, Sr, was a Civil War veteran and crew captain at Harvard College. Naturally, Francis Jr. followed in his father’s paddle strokes to captain his own Harvard teams and was active in the Harvard Alumni Association. He was part of the family banking business and helped the American Red Cross during World War I. He and his wife Hetty Appleton Sargent Higginson had three children.

I was able to trace much of the family’s property history thanks to the extensively researched blog, Back Bay Houses. The couple moved to London, England where their older two children were born: Francis Lee Higginson III in 1906 and Joan Letitia Higginson Dunning in 1908. The family moved back to the United States in 1910 and settled at 215 Commonwealth in Cambridge. Youngest child Griselda Higginson Williams was born five years later in 1915. Hetty died in 1921 at age 43, when the children were about 15, 13, and 6. Francis Jr. would have hired a helper to care for his house and children and apparently found love along the way, as he married his Irish-American housekeeper Aileen Muriel Johnstone Higginson in 1930. Good for her! Once all of the children had grown up, Francis Jr. and Aileen briefly moved down the street to 129 Commonwealth before moving permanently to the Wenham property.

Despite the excellent record-keeping for the family, I could not find the story of what happened to their Wenham property. Photographs of the Higginson mansion are currently held in the collections of Historic New England, including the living room, staircase landing, and dining room. The photographs were taken by Mary Harrod Northend, a local writer specializing in photographing colonial buildings and period decor. As for the family, Francis Jr. appears to have lived a long and fulfilling life, dying in 1969 at age 91, while Aileen died the next year at age 81. The three children were similarly fortunate with Joan even reaching 101 years old. It is unclear how, why, or when the mansion was demolished, along with how Mass Audubon attained the property, which opened to the public in 2023.

Cedar Pond Wildlife Sanctuary is open daily from dawn to dusk. Admission is free, and plenty of parking is available in an unpaved lot. About 3 miles (5 km) of trails are open to walkers, leashed dogs, and horses. With its construction sponsored in part by Essex County Community Foundation, the Woodland Loop is 0.9 miles (1.4 km) in length and used as an All Persons Trail, including a post-and-rope guiding system with braille signage, six seating areas, and a stone dust pathway that allows wheelchair users to navigate the space while being more environmentally friendly than a paved path. For those living in or visiting the Wenham area, this is a peace place to relax.