The Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire, is a connected farm that was the home of poet Robert Frost from 1900 to 1911. Today it is a New Hampshire state park in use as a historic house museum. The property is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the Robert Frost Homestead.
History
Frost lived in the house from the fall of 1900 until it was sold in November 1911. The majority of the poems collected in his first two books, A Boy's Will and North of Boston, were written here. Many of the poems in his 1916 collection Mountain Interval were also written at the Derry farm. Frost once said, "There was something about the experience at Derry which stayed in my mind, and was tapped for poetry in the years that came after."
Elliott, first son of Frost and his wife Elinor, died on the farm in 1900 at age four, likely due to influenza. The other children were educated at home by their parents. Lesley Frost later recalled she was "taught the alphabet on a typewriter... My mother taught the organized subjects, reading (the phonetic method), writing (then known as penmanship), geography, spelling. My father took on botany and astronomy."
A hired man named Carl Burrell (and, occasionally, Burrell's father) assisted with farming duties like building hen coops, tending livestock, and picking apples and pears. Locals thought Frost was lazy as a farmer. He later recalled that they were correct: "I always liked to sit up all hours of the night planning some inarticulate crime, going out to work when the spirit moved me, something they shook their heads ominously at, with proper prejudice. They would talk among themselves about my lack of energy. I was a failure in their eyes from the start."
The family moved out in the fall of 1909 to rented lodgings in Derry Village while Frost taught at the Pinkerton Academy. They later moved to Plymouth, New Hampshire so that Frost could teach at the Plymouth Normal School.
Modern history
The property, originally owned by Frost's grandfather, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1968. The property is a New Hampshire state park.
It is located on the east side of Rockingham Road (New Hampshire Route 28), 2 miles (3.2Â km) southeast of Derry Village. It is open to the public seasonally.
See also
- Robert Frost Farm (Ripton, Vermont)
- The Frost Place, Franconia, New Hampshire
- List of National Historic Landmarks in New Hampshire
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Rockingham County, New Hampshire
References
External links
- Robert Frost Farm Historic Site, New Hampshire Division of Parks and Recreation
- The Robert Frost Farm (robertfrostfarm.org)