Reese Denny Alsop Gilder Palmer
For more than four decades, Reese has lived, worked, and sacrificed at Four Brooks Farm. He inherited the responsibility of daily labor, land management, caregiving, repairs, and the emotional weight of maintaining the ancestral home — which makes the preservation of this property even more essential to continuing the family's legacy.
Reese remained on the land through every hardship — weather, isolation, illness, financial strain, and decades of caring for both parents. His life's work has been the protection and survival of Four Brooks Farm.
The Other Siblings
Walter Walker Palmer — left Four Brooks at 18 and never returned to live on the property. He established his life and career first in Boston, then in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
George Gilder — has never lived at Four Brooks Farm. He did not share in its labor, its maintenance, or the caretaking of the Gilder Palmer parents.
Comfort de Kay Gilder (later Gordenier) — spent her youth between Four Brooks Farm and her grandmother's residence in Europe. She later married and did not live at or maintain Four Brooks.
What the Parents Promised Their Sons
Fairview
→ Walter Walker Palmer
- to build a home on the lot,
- to earn rental income from the structures,
- and to sell extra acreage if necessary for his family's future.
Four Brooks Farm
→ Reese Denny Alsop Gilder Palmer
- 45+ years of farming,
- land stewardship,
- caring for both parents through illness and old age,
- and lifelong devotion to the property.
The Passing of the Parents
- Gilder Palmer died in 2006
- Anne Alsop Gilder Palmer died in 2020, fourteen years later
Both were lovingly and consistently cared for by Reese.
After 2020: Four Years of Turmoil
Since 2020, Four Brooks Farm has been destabilized by:
- inheritance conflicts,
- financial strain,
- legal pressure,
- and outside interference in the estate.
What should have been a simple fulfillment of parental wishes became a prolonged battle for survival.
Four Brooks Farm must be preserved.
Your support sustains the land, the archive, and the legacy that Reese has fought for decades to keep alive.