Page 45 - The Hunt - Fall 2022

Conservancy and Natural Lands were named beneficiaries, and those funds helped preserve the initial four easements and a larger Odell tract.
But the Odell homestead remained as the “donut hole.” “Mrs. Odell held out and didn’t want to talk to anyone,” says David Shields, who’s since retired as the conservancy’s associate director and worked on the project from its inception. “She didn’t want anyone interfering with her life, and we didn’t blame her.”
The conservancy even summoned George A. “Frolic” Weymouth, its esteemed founder and chairman, who knew Odell well. But
even he couldn’t convince her. Initial attempts to work through kin failed. “We struck out entirely,” Shields says.
Then, in 2007, the family parted with an adjacent 100-acre tract. The conservancy came up with the funds for the $8 million purchase price through a mad fundraising effort, all while staving off developers. “We felt like we had a gun to our head,” Shields says.
The conservancy made the purchase in May of that year, then successfully negotiated first-refusal rights to purchase Odell’s farm after her death. It did so in September 2018, when Odell passed at age 93. The conservancy
raised the $1.2 million with help from Chester County, which received funding through the American Battlefield Protection Program. “I didn’t know Roberta Odell, but she was a tough negotiator,” says Stephanie Armpriester, Brandywine Conservancy’s newly appointed director of conservation and stewardship. “Across the board, her family knew how valuable her property was.”
Watson recalls the negotiations. “When we sat down with the conservancy, they said, ‘We have this donut and you’re in the center of the donut.’ I said, ‘That means it’s worth a lot of money. You shouldn’t have told me that.’”
Brandywine Conservancy’s Stephanie Armpriester at Skirmish Hill Farm.
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