Page 43 - The Hunt - Fall 2022

Skirmish Hill Farm, with the Odell homestead in the distance.
Her four white mules were already an attraction in the prominent Brandywine Valley carriage scene when Roberta “Bobby” Odell acquired Zippy to pull her Civil War-era prison wagon. Bought from
a zoo as a baby, the zebra came with his own natural prison colors. But Zippy was a failed experiment, never becoming domesticated enough for public appearances and even badly biting Odell’s hand once.
All of which was par for the course at Skirmish Hill Farm, a place known for its oddities and animals. There was a Scottish bull— and “something that wasn’t an ostrich but like an ostrich,” recalls Odell’s son, Knox Watson.
Skirmish Hill was also known for its mystifying matriarch who, at 90 years old, was still riding horses and living alone on historically significant Brandywine Battlefield land—the 13 acres
known as Birmingham Hill during the American Revolution. A mix of farm stock and high society, Odell was most comfortable in blue jeans and a hat, riding her horses—and having it her way. “She could get all gussied up, but then she’d drive her
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JIM GRAHAM