Where Vermont History Happens!
The Orleans County Historical Society is restoring the Samuel Read House with the generous donations of our supporters.
A private and picturesque Northeast Kingdom village, the museum includes six buildings on fifty five acres. Seemingly untouched by time, this hillside town is centered around a monumental stone dormitory built in 1834-36 by the Rev. Alexander Twilight, the nation ’s first African American college graduate, and state legislator. The stone house now houses 25 rooms of exhibits focusing on 19th century life in northern Vermont. The collection includes furniture, textiles, photographs, pottery, folk and fine art, and many of the tools and utensils of daily life. The exhibits continue in Twilight’s own house, two more historic houses and a traditional barn.
The Museum is located in the Brownington Village Historic District, amidst 19th century homes and a church, surrounded by farmland.
"I like the way the Stone House still looms up on that hilltop, where the wind blows all the time. There it sits, unshaken and monolithic, as I write this sentence and as you read it, every bit as astonishing today as the day it was completed. What a tribute to the faith of its creator, the Reverend Alexander Twilight: scholar, husband, teacher, preacher, legislator, father-away-from-home to nearly 3,000 boys and girls, an African American and a Vermonter of great vision, whose remains today lie buried in the church-yard just up the maple-lined dirt road from his granite school, in what surely was, and still is, one of the last best places anywhere."
Howard Frank Mosher
Vermont Life Magazine
Autumn, 1996
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