Anne R. Hilliard

CUMBERLAND FORESIDE – Anne Rose Hilliard, 99, passed away peacefully on September 18, 2021. Born on August 9, 1922, in Norwalk Connecticut, she was the second of five children of Annette (Moran) and Robert Selden Rose of New Haven, Connecticut. She attended the Foote School there and then Chatham Hall in Chatham, Virginia.

Mrs. Hilliard attended Radcliffe College and upon graduation in 1944, moved to New York City to work as a researcher at “Time” magazine. She met her future husband Henry, also a “Time” employee, and the newlyweds moved to his home, Pittsburgh, where they had two daughters. In 1952 the young family moved to Freeport, Maine to live near the ocean, and where Harry was joining a new boatyard. After a move to Yarmouth, their son and a third daughter were born. Mr. Hilliard imparted his love of sailing to Mrs. Hilliard and their children. The family almost always had a sailboat in the water, in which they explored the islands and inlets of Casco Bay.

In 1962, the Hilliards moved to Concord, Massachusetts for Henry’s job. As the children grew up Mrs. Hilliard volunteered in the Watertown, Massachusetts schools and then worked as a reading teacher for children with dyslexia at the Carroll School in Lincoln. She volunteered at Emerson Hospital, the Concord Garden Club, Trinity Church, and other organizations.

Mrs. Hilliard also started a business marketing sportswear, but soon found she enjoyed designing and manufacturing her own creations, which proved a more satisfying enterprise. 

Throughout her life, Mrs. Hilliard was passionate about gardening and landscaping. Wherever she lived she was active in garden clubs and designed gardens and landscaping for herself and others. Upon retirement Mrs. Hilliard and Henry returned to Cumberland Foreside, where she worked tirelessly on her gardens with the help of her longtime gardening assistant. She won local and state garden design competitions and hosted garden tours. In the week before her death, Mrs. Hilliard was supervising a gardening who was trimming one of her flower beds. She also loved to cook, travel, and play bridge and tennis.

In “retirement,” Mrs. Hilliard decided to change Anne Hilliard, Inc., her successful manufacturing business, to a home-based enterprise. She formed Bridgeditions, for which she designed and stitched unique and popular specialty bridge table covers. With advancing age, Mrs. Hilliard lost her characteristic manual dexterity and felt great frustration at being unable to create beauty with her hands.

Mrs. Hilliard was predeceased by Henry, to whom she was married for 67 years. She is survived by her sister Edie Hopkins of Severna Park, Maryland; her daughters Melissa of Old Orchard Beach, Larkin of Santa Barbara, California, and Christina Lamkin and her husband, Mark, of Framingham, Massachusetts; and by her son Henry and her grandson Willem, both of Stonington.

A memorial service will be held October 10th, 2021 at 1 PM at the Episcopal Church of St. Mary in Falmouth Foreside.

In lieu of flowers, friends are requested to make contributions to Hospice of Southern Maine, Gosnell Memorial Hospice House, 11 Hunnewell Rd., Scarborough ME 04074.

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Anne R. Hilliard, please visit our floral store.