Upriver History: The Indian motorcycle founder retired to a Suffield dairy farm
The 2004 National Register nomination for Hilltop Farm traces how George M. Hendee turned Mapleton Avenue farmland into a prize Guernsey and poultry estate.
SUFFIELD - The man who started the Indian motorcycle company spent his retirement raising prize cows and chickens on a hilltop farm in Suffield, according to the Hilltop Farm Historic District's National Register nomination.
George M. Hendee, a champion bicycle racer from Springfield, founded what became the Indian Motocycle Company with machinist Oscar Hedstrom in 1901. As his fortune grew, he went looking for a country estate close to his business, the nomination says.
In August 1913 he bought seven parcels, nearly 200 acres, along Mapleton Avenue in the northeast corner of Suffield, at the Massachusetts line above the Connecticut River. Members of the Sikes family had farmed the area since the 1680s. He later added land until he held about 460 acres.
Hendee built a huge Colonial Revival dairy barn with two silo towers in 1914 and moved to the farm that year. He left the company in 1916 and bred Guernsey cows and white leghorn chickens, and in the 1930s the farm employed more than 100 workers. He sold it in 1940 and died in 1943.
His manor house was later torn down. The town bought 127 acres of the old farm, including the barn, in 2001 and set aside a 76-acre conservation area. In 2004 the barn and some nearby buildings were sold for college use, the nomination says.
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