Massachusetts Audubon Society Makes First Land Purchase
On this day in 1922, the Massachusetts Audubon Society purchased its first parcel of land. For $8,000, it acquired 43 acres in the town of Sharon — the core of the Moose Hill Wildlife Sanctuary that today encompasses 2,000 acres. The Society owed its existence to Harriet Lawrence Hemenway, a strong-minded member of the Boston elite, and the women and men she enlisted in her cause — shutting down the industry that slaughtered birds to supply feathers for fashionable women's hats. Incorporated in 1896, Mass Audubon scored its first success the following year when the state legislature outlawed the trade in wild-bird feathers. As one of the early land conservation organizations in Massachusetts, the Society would become a strong advocate for conservation and one of the largest landowners in the state.
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