In 1913, in headlines across the country, with accompanying photographs and interviews, came news of a tumultuous court battle in the tiny town of Eliot, Maine. People who’d stood by through the early stages of the case now began taking a deeper interest in the nearby inn, expansive grounds, and activities of Green Acre, which its founder, Sarah Farmer, had modeled, somewhat, on The Concord School of Philosophy.

In 1907, Green Acre's Mother Heart had tripped and fallen so hard she was left an invalid for the rest of her days. Within three years she had succumbed to a total physical and emotional breakdown. Her well-meaning family and friends had committed her to a private sanatorium in nearby Portsmouth. Two legal guardians had been appointed, one in New Hampshire, and the other in Maine. A court battle had followed on the heels of that decision, each side pressing for rightful custody of the frail and ailing Mother Heart.

Sarah Farmer's generous benefactress, William Randolph Hearst's mother Phoebe, had years before established a trust fund in her friend's name, assuring that Sarah would retain ownership of the Green Acre Inn and all associated property so long as Green Acre conferences continued from year to year. But, per the terms of the Union Trust, should the annual programs lapse, the administration of the property would automatically be transferred to the fund's trustees.

It seemed highly unlikely, as the summer of 1913 approached, that there would be a conference or any other activity at Green Acre that year. Then, unexpectedly, a group of residents came forward. Attending Green Acre on a Fellowship program provided through the Union trust, the group went ahead with plans for summer activities, with or without Mother Heart's blessing. Several of the Fellows, as it happened, were followers of the Persian prophet, Bahaulla, who in 1863 had declared Himself to be The One promised by all religions, which had caused Him to be banished from Persia. When the Bahais called for a reorginization of the Executive Board of Union Trustees, as well as amendments to the Trust's by-laws, Sanborn was furiously opposed. This, he perceived, was nothing less than an attempted takeover, the Bahais moving in on susceptible territory, seizing control of Green Acre.

The case went to the Supreme Court of Maine, which ruled in favor of a new Board of Directors, which would include six Bahai members. Bahais poured into Eliot from around the globe, swelling the Green Acre Fellowship and filling Bahai coffers, enabling the purchase of neighboring properties, benefiting numerous of the town’s citizens.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the president, Wilson, was ushering in a new American era of segregated offices, restaurants, public toilets, and drinking faucets. In 1913, Wilson told a group of black leaders, Segregation is not humiliating, but is a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.

In Massachusetts in 1914, after forty-six years with the Springfield Republican, Frank Sanborn retired his Associate Editor post. Salutes to his long career as a newspaperman included high praise for his Boston Letters column, which one admirer called delightfully caustic, mingled with regrets at journalism's losing Sanborn's blistering criticisms of deserving politicians.

On June 28th, a Serbian terrorist murdered the Archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austrio-Hungary, in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, precipitating The Great War. One by one, the European nations entered into the growing conflagration.

Not quite a year later, on May 7th, 1915, over a hundred Americans died when a German submarine sank the British Ocean Liner The Lusitania. Theodore Roosevelt accused the Germans of murder, and the American President of cowardice. Woodrow Wilson wanted cooler heads to prevail, to keep America out of the war. He called for Preparedness, building up the U.S. economy and expanding America’s military and naval forces, so that a Big America, as he called it, would be a major player in World Affairs after The Great War ended.

Writing of Concord in 1915, local history buff Allen French mentioned The last of the Concord School, Frank Sanborn, easily recognized in Concord Streets by his tall, stooping figure, his white locks, and his rapid stride.

Time touched him with a gentle hand, Victor wrote proudly of his father. Though at last it bent his tall, spare form, it seemed not to diminish his physical force, nor his keen, eager mentality. In old age, he was a frequent visitor at the Boston State House, at the Public Library and at the Harvard College Library. He went often to the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical Society, of which he was a member, and to whose proceedings he was often a contributor. And it was always a delight to him to show to visitors from far or near the shrines of Old Concord, every foot of which he knew, and every field and nook and hill of which he loved.

When word came to him of the latest stirring news from Green Acre, Maine, the eighty-three year old Sanborn was unruffled, busy with the work Alcott had recommended at the end of his good long life -- tinkering in his garden. The news was that Mother Heart, Sarah Jane Farmer, was being held against her will in a Portsmouth, New Hampshire sanatorium by her doctor and legal guardian. An attempt was made to rescue her, but Sanborn had no part in that.

In 1916, though he insisted he wished only to tend to his own garden, and let the world, futurity, and all destiny unravel as they would, Sanborn was thrust into the center of another bitter entanglement, the so-called Concord Sewage Controversy.

Opposition to Concord's being the site of a public prison had ceased in the late 1870s, Sanborn remembered in 1916, when it had become a reformatory for first offenders. Its pollution of the beautiful Assabet River by its sewage was a real and tangible evil, but that mischief was partly remedied, and was so much outdone by the American Woolen Company's pollution that we no longer think of the prison as the chief offender.

The whole science of the disposal of sewage is so little understood by the town officials of Concord and Lexington, Sanborn jabbed, that our posterity will look back with surprise at the waste of public money spent in these two towns, in robbing the farmers and gardeners of the natural fertilizers of their lands. Ten years hence all this nonsense will have been dismissed to the moon, and each villager will be allowed and expected to utilize his own product on his own property as I have been doing for seven and thirty years.

He was hauled into court on charges of wrongfully using his personal sewage to fertilize his private garden. Though Sanborn lost the court battle, the headstrong, legendary old futzer went right on ahead, doing as he pleased with his sewage, his mulch, and his garden.

In 1916, guerrillas forces led by General Francisco Villa attempted to overthrow Mexico's civilian government. When Pancho Villa began raiding American border towns, killing American citizens, President Wilson sent in General John J. Pershing to investigate. The Mexican government declared the expedition an illegal invasion, mobilizing its army. War was averted only when Wilson acquiesced, calling Black Jack Pershing home.

In the second week of June, 1916, at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Charles Evans Hughes was nominated for President, with Charles Warren Fairbanks for his running mate. That same week, likewise in Chicago, the Progressive Party nominated Teddy Roosevelt and John Milliken Parker. The following week, in St. Louis, Missouri, Democrats called on the incumbents, Wilson and Marshall, to run for a second term.

In 1916, the doctoral thesis of the teacher and critic Mark Van Doren, Thoreau: A Critical Study, was published by Houghton Mifflin. Though much influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson's essay on Thoreau, and despite his own strong opinions about Thoreau and Thoreau's contribution to literature, Van Doren included a disclaimer in his preface which posited that Thoreau's journals were to blame if any reader came to what Van Doren termed Unwelcome Conclusions. It is easy enough to point out that Thoreau's main effort came to nothing, Van Doren apologized. But the likelihood remains that Thoreau will always count for something among sophisticated persons who take him with the sufficient allowance of salt.

An infuriated Sanborn, eighty-four, scrawled angry emendations and corrections in the book's margins, condemning it as uninformed at best and, at its worst, plain stupid.

In August 1916, a warrant was issued by Portsmouth, New Hampshire's Chief of Police, ordering a search be made of the local sanatorium where Sarah Farmer, Green Acre's Mother Heart, was said to be imprisoned, against her will, by her physician and personal guardian. Chief Hurley was joined in his raid on the asylum by two of Sarah Farmer's lawyers, relatives, several Bahais, and a Judge accompanied by his chauffer. In the confusion of obtaining Sarah Farmer's release, several other inmates also escaped from the asylum. Sarah Farmer was taken back to Green Acre.

At the end of September, Sanborn traveled north to Maine to visit Sarah Farmer to try to discern, and to influence, Green Acre's future. There to meet with Sanborn was Andrew Dickson White, president of Cornell University. Both were impressed by, and wary of, the enormous influx of Bahais, then busy shaping what Greenacre would become. When on September 29th White was suddenly called back from the Maine retreat to the Ithaca campus, a disappointed Sanborn returned home. In November Sarah Farmer would die and be laid to rest with splendid, generous ceremony by her large, devoted, indebted Bahai following.

In Concord on October 7th came a testimonial celebration at the then already legendary Hillside Chapel, the general meeting and lecture hall of The School of Philosophy on the knoll just above the Orchard House, honoring Franklin Benjamin Sanborn.

Some of Sanborn's friends and neighbors delivered personal tributes. Nathaniel Hawthorne's daughter, Rose Lathrop, the prime organizer of what she had billed The Final Session of the School, proclaimed, Here is a man who unites in himself the best qualities of us all. We recognize in him the publicist, the journalist, the philosopher and the practical thinker who adapts his beliefs to the betterment of the world.

Numerous letters and telegrams from associates were read aloud. Andrew Dickson White of Cornell, having met with Sanborn in Maine, had written on October 5th from Greenfield, Massachusetts on his journey back to Ithaca, a letter of regret for not being at the event:

I would have especially rejoiced to acknowledge publicly the debt due you from Cornell University, White wrote. You were called; and your coming proved to be a blessing to us all. Since those days, the university has furnished a great number of men eminent in the public life of the State, and among them have been two Governors of New York, several Mayors of cities, a very large number of the members of the two houses of the Legislature, a considerable number of Judges, and a long array of writers for the Press. I deem it not only a pleasure, but an honor and a duty, to thank you for your admirable part in the whole work referred to. Indeed, it was wholly your work.

Victor later reported his daughter's writing of her grandfather, I couldn't help thinking how dignified and worthy he was of such an honor. I am a proud granddaughter.

At the end of January, 1917 came Germany's announcement to the world its campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare, sinking without warning any vessel approaching Britain or the coast of France, whether merchant ship or passenger liner, neutral or Allied.

Finding the Concord climate too severe in winter, Victor Sanborn recalled, my father and mother spent the inclement season with my brother, Francis, at Westfield in New Jersey.

On January 18th at the Plainfield, New Jersey train station, a baggage truck banged into him. It knocked him down. At first the haggard old man was livid, just furious. Then, bedridden with a broken hip, Sanborn eased up.

In the weeks before his death on February 24, 1917, Sanborn led his wife and son to believe he was on the mend. He scribbled new notes in the proof copy of his last work, about Thoreau. In his final days on earth, recollecting his past times from his deathbed, Sanborn seemed amused, even lighthearted.