Mission House (Stockbridge, Massachusetts)

Mission House
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
U.S. Historic district Contributing property
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Location	Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Coordinates	42°16′59.6″N 73°18′57.1″W / 42.283222°N 73.315861°W / 42.283222; -73.315861
Built	c. 1742
Architect	John Sergeant
Architectural style	Georgian
Part of	Main Street Historic District
NRHP reference No.	68000038[1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	November 24, 1968
Designated NHL	November 24, 1968
Designated CP	January 17, 2002

The Mission House is an historic house located at 19 Main Street, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was built between 1741 and 1742 by a Christian missionary to the local Mahicans. It is a National Historic Landmark, designated in 1968 as a rare surviving example of a colonial mission house. It is now owned and operated as a nonprofit museum by the Trustees of Reservations.^[2]

The town of Stockbridge was established in the late 1730s as a mission community to the Mahicans. John Sergeant was the first missionary, formally beginning his service in 1735. His first house, built in the valley where the Indians lived, has not survived; this house was built in the white community on the hill above the town following his marriage in 1739. It remained in the Sergeant family until the 1870s, and survived Gilded Age developments of the late 19th century.

In the 1920s the house was purchased by Mabel Choate, owner of the nearby Naumkeag estate, and moved down into the valley. She and landscape designer Fletcher Steele restored the building, furnished it with 18th century pieces, and designed gardens to Steele's vision of what a colonial landscape might have been. Choate opened the house as a museum in 1930, and donated it (and eventually Naumkeag as well) to the Trustees of Reservations, who operate both properties as museums.