Robert Todd Lincoln was the eldest of the four sons of President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, and the only one of them to survive into adulthood. He first visited Manchester Center, Vermont at age 20 in the summer of 1863 when he, his brother Tad, and their mother stayed at the nearby Equinox House to escape the heat of Washington, DC. Abraham Lincoln's granddaughter and full-time from 1946 until her death in 1948. Hildene remained occupied by descendants of the Lincoln family until 1975, when the next to last descendant of the Lincoln-Harlan family, Mary Lincoln Beckwith, granddaughter of Robert and Mary and daughter of Jessie and Warren Wallace Beckwith, died there. In 1978 the non-profit organization, the Friends of Hildene, purchased the property and began restoration of the house, outbuildings and gardens.
Landscape
The name Hildene is from the old English words meaning hill and valley with stream. Completed in 1905 in the Georgian Revival style, the house is located on a promontory overlooking the Battenkill Valley. Approximately half of the estate is located at the lower level of the valley and includes meadows and wetlands. A formal garden in the form of a cathedral's stained glass window was planted in 1907. The window pattern is defined by privet hedge and filled with mixed borders of annual and perennial flowering plants providing the multicolored "stained glass." The garden is especially noted for its collection of over 1,000 herbaceous peonies. In 2008, the Rowland Agricultural Center at Hildene Farm opened to the public with its herd of Nubian goats and cheese making facility. In the summer of 2011, the restored 1903 wooden Pullman palace car, Sunbeam, made its home at the Manchester estate. The car came off the line during Robert's tenure as president of the Pullman Company.
Interior
Hildene is furnished almost entirely with Lincoln family furniture, and contains artifacts belonging to Robert Todd Lincoln and his parents. In 1908 an Æolianpipe organ was installed at a cost of $11,500. In 1980 the Friends of Hildene restored the organ.
