History
The first recorded land deed for the property known as Barberry Hill dates back to 1761 (the same year the town of Woodstock was established) when, through a New Hampshire Grant, Aaron Smith was granted 101 acres to create a homestead there. When Smith arrived and settled on Barberry Hill, Vermont was an independent republic in a disputed region between New Hampshire and New York. Thirty years later—in 1791—the region became the U. S. State of Vermont.
By the early nineteenth century, Barberry Hill was composed of five properties that changed ownership numerous times throughout the 1800s.
From 1906 to 1922, Woodstock village resident, Franklin S. Billings, acquired four of the properties, uniting them together under his tenure. Used as a recreational retreat as well as an agricultural resource, he built a small getaway cabin on the upper portion, which he and his family called “the farm.” In 1948, his son, Franklin S. Billings Jr., inherited title to the Barberry Hill property and later acquired the fifth, lower portion of Barberry Hill to join them, making the close-to four-hundred acres that remain together today. In 2023, his daughter, Ann Suokko, acquired the land, where today she and her growing family live, work, and care for the property.
The cabin on upper Barberry Hill under construction, 1906.
Summer idyll—the cabin at the farm, 1907.
Pitching hay at the farm, summer, 1907.
Family and friends lunching on the cabin porch, 1907.
The view down the valley, 1907. The largely open land, covered with pristine grasses and wildflowers and marked by stone walls, sugar maples, and apple trees, once stretched from the shoulder of Barberry Hill to the Ottauquechee River two miles south.