By Sara Mattes
The letters from Gov Dukakis and Gov. Dever (click to enlarge).
To be honored as a Century Farm, a farm must be owned by the same family for at least 100 consecutive years, and a family member must be living on the premises. For the Flint family and their Matlock Farm, these were easy qualifications to meet. The land was acquired by Thomas Flint in the 1640s and has been farmed by Flint family members continuously since the early 1700s.
When the Flints received their Century Farm Award in 1990, Gov. Michael Dukakis wrote to express his “warmest congratulations.” As he said in his letter, “You and your forebears worked the good land of Massachusetts and you have personified the ideals of hard work, self-sufficiency, and dedication which we all hold so dear.”
The Flints’ farm had been honored earlier by Gov. Paul Dever in 1949, when Warren F. Flint was inducted into the Green Pasture Club in recognition of “production of pasture feed in order to conserve grain, reduce feed cost, and maintain the dairy industry.”
The Flints and Matlock Farm are no longer in the dairy business, but the family continues in other agricultural endeavors and continue to personify “the ingenuity and perseverance of successive generations of the family that has owned this Massachusetts farm for more than one hundred years.”
“Lincoln’s History” is an occasional column by members of the Lincoln Historical Society.