Longwood receives bequest of Northern Neck farm, to be preserved for environmental education

A recent bequest to Longwood College will protect more than 600 acres of land by the Chesapeake Bay from development.

Mary Farley Ames Lee, a Longwood alumna who died in December 1999 at the age of 82, has left the college her 643-acre farm in the Northern Neck with houses and barns, low-level meadows and streams, open fields and secondary woodlands. Ames Hull Springs Farm is in the Mount Holly section of Westmoreland County, between Glebe Creek and Aimes Creek where they flow into the Potomac River.

She also gave the college $1.5 million to establish an endowment to support the farm, and the residual from her will is expected to provide approximately $200,000 in scholarships.

For years Mrs. Lee invited to the farm Longwood students in anthropology, ornithology and botany. Archaeology students have visited the farm for digs on this and surrounding properties since 1993. Longwood faculty and students have identified at least 130 species of birds, including American bald eagles, and more than 150 species of plants on the farm.

Appraised at more than $1 million at the time of Mrs. Lee's death, the property under Longwood's stewardship will be a land and water laboratory. Possibilities for research include sustaining forestry and farming with sound environmental practices, controlling pests in a balanced system, applying fertilizers that will not contaminate ground water, and sequencing crop rotation most efficiently. Additional research can answer questions about species living at aquatic-terrestrial interfaces. Bird counts and water monitoring can continue. The farm will be a resource for organizations such as Clean Virginia Waterways and would be used for a proposed Ph.D. program in environmental sciences.

Structures on the property include The Cottage, a ranch-style bungalow that had been used as a private retreat; The Camp, which sleeps 25 people dormitory-style; and The Big House, built in 1914 and renovated in 1994, which was the Lees' residence.

Longwood President Patricia Cormier has said the college's continuing and new programs will be an "appropriate recognition of the passion with which the Lees have protected the natural state of Ames Hull Springs Farm."

"This is an extraordinary gift from an extraordinary woman," Dr. Cormier said. "Longwood will continue her legacy by being good stewards of the land. Ames Hull Springs Farm will be used for environmental education and preserved for the people of the Commonwealth forever."

A native of Arlington, Mrs. Lee graduated from Longwood in 1938 and two years later earned another bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina. After working briefly in her father's lumber business in Arlington and serving during World War II as personnel director of the Fourth Civil Service Region in Winston-Salem, N.C., she became registrar of voters for Arlington County in 1947. She held that position until 1973 and was one of the co-founders of the Voter Registrars Association of Virginia, serving as its first president in 1972-73.

Mrs. Lee recalled spending "many, many happy summers" at what was then known as Hull Springs Farm, purchased by her grandfather in the early 1900s. In 1952 her father gave her one acre of land at the farm, where she and her first husband, Walter E. Thompson, who died in 1973, built a small cottage. She married the Rev. Dr. Alfred S. Lee in 1984, after which the couple split their time between the farm and Naples, Florida. In 1990 she expressed a desire that the farm "remain protected from over-development and continue to bring joy and happiness to those who now live here and for others in the future."

She gave generously to both of her alma maters, as well as to Washington & Lee University and Amherst College. In 1992 she gave a $120,000 gift to Longwood which was used by the School of Education and Human Services for a visiting professorship and a lecture series. The rest of the money will be used this year to sponsor a lecture and presentations and readings by a prominent figure in children's literature. She established a professorship in business administration in UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School in 1990.