James DeNormandie

In the 1940s, DeNormandie acquired much of the land around Mount Misery, in Lincoln, to prevent it from being developed and for his own agriculture uses. He dammed Beaver Dam Brook and excavated soil to form the lower pond, as well as re-damming the original upper mill pond, and he built a cabin on the top of Mount Misery which later burned. DeNormandie sold Mount Misery to the town as public conservation land in 1969.^[4] The land contains Beaver Dam Brook, which is still home to several beavers, and Terrapin Lake, a kettle hole, where cranberries were grown until the 1990s.^[5]

DeNormandie married Martha Boyd Prouty, of Spencer, Massachusetts, in 1943.^[6] They had three daughters and three sons.^[2]

He owned a dairy farm in Lincoln which he expanded via a partnership with Floyd Verrill of nearby Concord.^[7] Together, they established The Dairy ice-cream parlor. DeNormandie's farm—and herd of Guernsey cattle—were destroyed by fire in 1954.^[2]

He was the founder and first president of the Massachusetts Association for Artificial Insemination, and was involved with several other livestock-related affiliates.^[2]

A Unitarian, he was involved in joining Lincoln's Unitarian and Congregational Churches to form the First Parish Church. He was also involved in preserving the First Church in Roxbury, at which his grandfather had been minister.^[2]

DeNormandie died in 1987 while at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for a heart ailment. Aged 80,^[7] he had been living in Lincoln.^[2] His widow survived him by 23 years and was interred beside him in Arborvitae Cemetery in Lincoln.