Our Legacy
GPC was founded in 1953 by Charles LeBoutillier Jr., a graduate of Harvard and MIT, after acquiring a Standard Poodle and realizing the potential of the breed.
Charles LeBoutillier of Baltimore, MD was largely responsible for the revival of interest in the poodle as a retriever in the early 1950s. His interest in this breed and their retrieving instincts was kindled by Frances Fisher of Wye Town Farm, Easton, Maryland. There, in 1951, where the Miles River and Woodland Creek join and flow into the Chesapeake Bay, Charles joined Fisher in training her standard poodles to retrieve ducks and other fowl from water and land.
Charles, his wife Anne, and Frances soon organized a series of demonstration of water retrieving by poodles. Those were exciting days a LeBoutillier, well-known obedience instructor and judge, plunged into the challenge of developing a line of poodles that would enhance the natural retrieving instincts of this greet breed.
Six decades later, the club continues to preserve the purity of all Poodle varieties through both education and competitive events in Maryland.
As originally stated by Charles LeBoutillier and Frances Fisher:
“The retriever breeding program is aimed toward producing sound and elegant dogs with the distinguishing characteristics of our breed. We are not interested in sacrificing a strong hunting instinct to a soft but glamorous twelve inch coat, nor would we intentionally perpetuate a poor color risk, for instance, simply because of excellence in the field. We consider very carefully the pedigree of each dog working with us.”
Source: Greenspring Poodle Club Records
About Charles L. Boutillier, Jr.
Charles was born Charles Leo Boutillier, Jr. on July 19, 1903 in Tweksbury, MA, the son of Charles Boutilier and Katherine Tompkins. His sister, Mary, still lives at the family home in Lowell. After excelling in grade school and high school, he went to Harvard, graduating with honors with the Class of 1925.
During the latter half of the 1920s, he did three years of post-graduate work in design at Harvard and M.I.T. and received a Lowell Fellowship to study in France and to paint, following the path of El Greco. He settled into a bohemian existence in Greenwich Village as a freelance designer with clients as diverse as Bloomingdales, Paramount Pictures, and Claudette Colbert. After the crash of 1929, he was fortunate to land a job as Director of Advertising with Cannon Shoe Company in Baltimore. He lived on Eutaw Place, drove a dashing red Hudson convertible, and with his highly trained Doberman, Rusty, cut a fine figure indeed.
His lifelong interest in dogs intensified in the thirties, when he initiated the Dog Owners Training Club of Maryland. He taught obedience classes and fell in love with fellow Doberman owner Anne Push, an athlete teaching physical education at the Bryn Mawr School.
They were married in 1941 at Stonewood, Anne’s recently completed house on Old Court Road in Brooklandville. Stonewood was soon home to a growing family: first Francie, then Kate, and then Geoff. Later it became he hub for much-anticipated visits from six grandchildren: Matthew, Jonathan, Charles, Anne, Timothy, and Daniel.
During World War II, he served in the Coast Guard Reserves, patrolling the then-shadowy wharves of Baltimore Harbor. Other nights, as a Civil Defense volunteer, he would set forth on his red bicycle – armed with a whistle, Civil Defense armband, and helmet – pedaling up and down the steep hills of Brooklandville to enforce the blackout.
In the early 1950s, Charles and Anne founded Stonewood Kennels and began breeding poodles, attempting to re-establish the breed’s per-eminence as a sporting breed. For over 40 years, the strain he developed sold far and wide. The family used to quip: “Stonewood poodles span the globe!”
When he retired from Cannon Shoe in 1968, he rekindled his artistic talents. He enrolled first at the Maryland Institute and then at Towson State. In printmaking, sculpture, painting, photography, and ruku, he demonstrated his drive.
In 1980, Anne became ill with Alzheimer’s disease. As the prime caregiver until her death in 1987, he bagan to devote himself to pursuits closer to home.
First it was camellias, and then, daylilies. As a member of the Freestate Daylily Socity, he hybridized hundreds of new beautiful varieties.
LeBoutillier left tremendous contributions to each of the disciplines he undertook and enriched the lives of every person he touched. One of the last great gentlemen, a compassionate, fostering, loving soul of immense talent and vision, he died July 10, 1996, seven days short of his ninety-third birthday.
Geoff and Kate LeBoutillier with Chi-Chi, Stevie, and Ruffles performing in a skit in Baltimore New-American's annual pet show at Patterson Park.
Stonewood Call Me Ishmael leaps from a Cambridge, MD Railroad trestle to retrieve a duck in 1961. Anne LeBoutillier watches.
The Great Stevie
Stonewood Gold Standard UDT
Bred, owned and trained by Charles Le Boutillier.