The Mission House: A Missionary and the Mohicans
Near Lenox, Massachusetts
In seventeen thirty-four, a young minister named John Sergeant came to live among the Mohican people in the southern Berkshires of Massachusetts. He learned their language so he could preach without an interpreter. When he married Abigail Williams in seventeen thirty-nine he built a proper home, completing it around seventeen forty-two.
Today that house is known as the Mission House, and it still stands in Stockbridge. Sergeant defended Mohican land rights against colonial encroachment until his death in seventeen forty-nine, but the protections eroded quickly after him. By seventeen eighty-three nearly all the Stockbridge Mohicans had been dispossessed and pushed westward.
The house survived, and in the nineteen twenties philanthropist Mabel Choate had it moved to its present site, filled it with colonial furnishings, and opened it as a museum. It is now a National Historic Landmark operated by the Trustees of Reservations.
