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Hugh Taylor Birch
(1848-1943)
Lucy Morgan, Antioch president Arthur Morgan, and Hugh Birch, at a memorial rock for Birch's daughter Helen, 1930.
For all intents and purposes, the Glen did not exist before 1929. Antioch College had managed to collect various parcels of land, but they were small and disconnected. Even the 1923 gift of John Bryan was only a shadow of today's Glen. Glen Helen Nature Preserve as we know it is the result of the efforts of Hugh Taylor Birch.
“Five or six years ago, I came to Antioch a lone man. I had lost all my immediate family. The last one to go was my daughter, Helen. I found that Antioch did not have ownership of the property in front of it. The college had a few scattered acres, but there was no place for the students to walk and play and be near to nature, so I conceived the idea of giving them a campus as a memorial to my daughter Helen.”
- Hugh Birch, quoted in Horace Mann at Antioch.
Birch practically grew up in the Glen. He played in its forests and waters as a boy and studied its botany and geology while attending Antioch College. He was a well-known personality on campus, particularly for his role on the baseball team. A failing mathematics grade prevented him from graduating in 3 years and so he left in 1869 to study law in Chicago. He married and had three children, however his wife and two sons died young, leaving him alone with his daughter Helen. In 1914, he brought her to see his boyhood home, and she was as taken with the beauty of the Glen as her father had been. They spent their entire visit exploring the woods and waterways.
For many years Birch split his time between Florida and Chicago, but at the end of his life he returned to Yellow Springs and built a large house in the very southern portion of the present day Glen. In 1925, Helen died. Four years later Antioch accepted 530 acres that Birch donated in his daughter’s name for study and enjoyment. Since then more parcels of land have been added, creating a 1000-acre preserve dedicated to education and recreation.
Photographs courtesy of Antiochiana.