Robert Frost Stone House Museum
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The Robert Frost Stone House Museum is an 18th-century historic house in South Shaftsbury, Vermont. Built in 1769, the Dutch Colonial farmhouse was purchased by the American poet Robert Frost (1878–1968) in 1920. Here, Frost wrote the poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and other poems in his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, New Hampshire (1923). Frost and his family lived in the house between 1920 and 1929. He gifted the house to his son, and daughter-in-law in 1923, and the property remained in the Frost family until the 1960s. In 2002, the non-profit organization, the Friends of Robert Frost purchased the home in a state of disrepair and restored the house, opening it to the public. In 2017, the group gifted the house and surrounding property to Bennington College. Today, the museum is open to the public and also used for literary and community events.
Frost purchased the Peleg Cole farm, also known as the Half Stone House, for his family in 1920 with the goal of becoming an apple farmer.[1] The property when Frost was in residence, included 80 acres and a large apple orchard.[2] At the time, Frost shared in a letter to a friend, "I have moved a good part of the way to a stone cottage on a hill at South Shaftsbury in southern Vermont on the New York side near the historic town of Bennington where if I have any money left after repairing the roof in the spring I mean to plant a new Garden of Eden with a thousand apple trees of some unforbidden variety.", according to Jay Parini, author of Robert Frost A Life.[3]
While living here, Frost wrote many of his poems in his Pulitzer Prize-winning volume of poetry, New Hampshire (1923), including Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. In December of 1923, he gifted the house to his son Carole and daughter-in-law Lillian LaBatt. Frost then purchased a second farm in the area, The Gully and later moved to the Gully farm. He was living at the stone house when he received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1924. The Frost family owned the house until the 1960s.[1][4]
