Dorothea Reeves, the driving force behind the purchase for a decade, couldn't have been happier. “This is paying off some of our debt to nature,” she told the "Marshfield Mariner". “Nature doesn’t last for us if we take it for granted. We don’t look ahead enough. I have felt strongly for a long time there was not a sufficient portion of open land in the southern part of town. Now we have some saved.” About one month after the sale, Edward Dwyer died at 81 years old. Although setbacks and delays postponed the official sale for a few months, in that year of 1984 the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary came into existence, named for an earlier owner of the land, and an important figure in American history.