BERLIN, N.H. — At their annual meeting on June 7, held at White Mountain Chalet in Berlin, the N.H. Timberland Owners’ Association (NHTOA) recognized Ann Davis of Wilmot with its Isobel Parke Award for 2025. Davis and her husband Marc were on hand to accept the award.
Davis joined the NHTOA before she even moved to New Hampshire from Illinois. In 2002 she and Marc were looking at parcels and they engaged forester Paul Mulcahy to come along on the visits and give his professional opinion. His opinion was that they should join NHTOA. It was also Mulcahy who found the parcel that would become Woods Without Gile, the Davises’ carefully managed land in Springfield.
After attending several workshops offered by NHTOA, in 2005 she called Jasen Stock and told him that she would like to serve on the board of directors. She was a member until 2013, serving as treasurer, vice president, president, and immediate past-president. “The first thing I did as chair was to shorten the board meetings from four hours to one and a half,” she recalled.
Davis, a former journalist, first suggested that the Timber Crier, which had been a four- to eight-page newsletter, become the glossy magazine that it is today. Then dove into the project of producing the book that would celebrate the NHTOA centennial in 2011. The undertaking took two years. She was co-chair of the committee with Ned Therrien and took on the responsibility of coming up with a design and a layout, right down to choosing the font face to use.
Rather than reciting a chronological history of the organization, she thought it would be more interesting to chronicle the stories of New Hampshire families that helped create the forest-products industry in the state. Davis contacted Steve Long, then the editor of Northern Woodlands magazine, who helped her find authors to write the chapters of the centennial book.
Davis remembers Isobel Parke, the first woman to be president of the NHTOA board, as a trailblazer. “She was an impressive person,” Davis recalled. “When she spoke, you listened.” It was Parke’s firm that designed the original logo for NHTOA. It was Davis who suggested that the Parke Award be instituted. “I’m honored to receive it,” she said.
“Women have always been a component of the forest-products industry,” Davis said, “but now they are being recognized more for it. They have been landowners, in the industry, and foresters.”
She attended a session at the American Forest Foundation Leadership Conference this year called “Changes in Women Landowners.” In the past women often inherited land from their husbands. Now, though, single women are buying land in the 20s and 30s. “They want a quiet place to live,” Davis said, “and they want to manage the timber. We need more of these women on our board and in the Timber Harvesting Council. If we ignore them, it will be detrimental.”
She attended the recent Women’s Breakfast in Concord. “There were at least 40 people at it,” Davis said, “networking and talking among themselves. It is what you have to do.”
Davis believes that NHTOA has been successful because it has adapted and changed over the years in responses to changes in the nature of the community it serves. “Now that Project Learning Tree is under our umbrella, we’re still a trade organization, but now we’ll have a strong educational component.”
CUTLINE – Ann Davis of Wilmot received the NHTOA Isobel Parke Award for 2025. The award recognizes contributions by a woman to timberland ownership and the forest products industry. Parke was the first woman to be president of the NHTOA Board of Directors. NHTOA Executive Director Jasen Stock presented the award.