***This meeting will take place upstairs in the Cornish Town Offices and is organized by the Historical Society***

CORBIN’S ANIMAL GARDEN – Mary Kronenwetter

In the late 1800s, Austin Corbin, from Newport, built a grand estate and bought out his neighbors’ farms to create a 22,000 acre wildlife game preserve stocked with boar, bison, bighorn sheep, antelope, elk, Chinese pheasant, and other imported animals. The grounds eventually became a prestigious private hunting park and hosted illustrious guests. This illustrated slideshow features archival images and a discussion of the complicated history and legacy of New Hampshire’s own American Gilded Age robber baron. The talk will also highlight the important legacy of the role the Corbin family and park naturalist Ernest Baynes played in the saving of the American bison from extinction.