On a damp Sunday afternoon in October 1994, Trustees met with Ms. Sally Genthner Smith and Ms. Jane Genthner DeCourcy at the end of Indian Hill Road, and walked back to the land. What we found was a mixed forest of hardwoods and dense stands of hemlock, a sheer rock wall almost twenty feet high, and a nearby rock outcropping that was clearly home to a den of porcupines and perhaps fox. So began our relationship with Genthner Woods. Gordon and Patience Genthner, bought the old Nesbit Woods farm on the Boston Road in the middle 1940’s, when Jane and Sally were in grammar school. The girls remembered that “it was a wondrous place to grow up, with a large bam, ninety plus acres of land, pastures, woodlots, pond, brook and orchards. Life became a grand adventure as we explored this new territory, most often on horseback. After cutting a trail from our back field through the woodland parcel to Old Nutting Road, we were able to ride out to Indian Hill, across pasture to Farmer’s Row and over to the old Fairgrounds and track. It opened up access to just about anywhere in town that we wanted to go.” The house and acreage were eventually sold, but Mr. Genthner retained that one piece that fronted on Nutting Road, thinking one day that one of his girls would return to Groton to live. That never happened, and when Mrs. Genthner died, the sisters felt they should be the ones to determine the future of this beloved piece of Groton. After contacting the abutters, they had the good fortune of a valuable correspondence with Arthur Blackman, who suggested gifting the land to the Groton Conservation Trust. They were thrilled with the idea and happy to give this woodland to the town, in memory of their parents and the wonderful “growing-up years we had in Groton.”