A National Historic Landmark, this Colonial-era house and museum and garden tells the story of the Stockbridge Mohicans and missionary John Sergeant.
Plan Your Visit
- Overview
- Ideas for Your Visit
- Admission & Hours
- Directions & Contact Info
- Regulations & Advisories
Overview
Narratives weave together across time and cultures at the Mission House. Built by missionary John Sergeant, the house watched over Stockbridge for nearly 200 years before it was moved to its current site for preservation.
John Sergeant arrived in 1734 as a missionary to assimilate the Mohican people. He learned their language so he could speak and preach to them without an interpreter. He built the Mission House around 1742 for his family and continued to defend the Mohican’s interests against white colonists until his death in 1749. Over the following decades, however, the Indigenous residents were dispossessed of their lands and voice in town government. Nearly all left Stockbridge by 1783 and began a long period of forced migration. Meanwhile, the Sergeant family continued living in the Mission House through the 19th century.
Mabel Choate purchased the building in the 1920s, when it was falling into disrepair across the street from her summer home, Naumkeag. Choate moved the house, filled it with her collection of colonial American furnishings, and added gardens and a museum of Mohican objects. In 2021, the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Community opened an exhibit (open seasonally) in the former “Indian Museum,” offering an Indigenous perspective on this history.
Ideas for Your Visit
Take a look at the property’s entrancing horticultural legacy, with a self-guided tour through a Colonial Revival garden designed by noted landscape architect Fletcher Steele between 1928 and 1933. A tidewater cypress fence encloses a dooryard garden of circular brick paths, while a kitchen garden divided by a crushed-stone walkway contains 100 herbs, perennials, and annuals that had culinary or medicinal value to early colonists. A house brims with an outstanding collection of 18th-century American furniture and decorative arts. Elsewhere, a small Native American museum offers Mohican artifacts gathered by Mabel Choate in the early 1930s and shares perspectives and insights from Mohicans today.
Admission & Hours
The gardens are open daily for self-guided tours, the interior of the house and Mohican Miles Exhibit is open seasonally, closed in the fall and winter.
Directions & Contact Info
19 Main Street
Stockbridge, MA 01262
Telephone: 413.298.3239
E-mail naumkeag@thetrustees.org
Get directions on Google Maps.
From Points East: Mass Turnpike (I-90), Exit 10 to Rt. 20 East. Take 1st right onto Rt. 102 West/Pleasant St. Follow for approx. 5 mi. Pleasant St. becomes Main St. The Mission House is on the right at corner of Main St. and Sergeant St.
From Points West: I-90 East to Exit B3, NY Rt. 22 South. Follow Rt. 22 to MA Rt. 102 East. Go approx. 7.5 mi. to Main St. The Mission House is at corner of Main and Sergeant. Limited roadside parking.
Regulations & Advisories
- Photography is not permitted inside the house.
- Dogs are not allowed on the property.
- The red barn behind the Mission House serves as The Trustees’ Berkshires Regional Office.
