About the Birthplace.

In 1688, in a small pleasant valley under the shoulder of Job’s Hill, Thomas Whittier built the house which was to be the Whittier family home. The family lived there for five generations, and it was the Birthplace of the Quaker Poet and Abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier on December 17, 1807.

The Whittier Birthplace, located on its original site, is an outstanding example of an old New England farm. It is substantially the same as when the Poet lived there from 1807 to 1836. The Birthplace is the setting of his most famous and beloved poem Snow-Bound. Many settings from his poems are recognizable to those who have read them.

Outside still stand a bridle-post where horses would be hitched, the natural stone mounting-block used by generations of children, and the doorstone of which the “barefoot boy” ate from his bowl of milk and bread.

The original barn, built in 1821 by John and Moses Whittier, the poet’s father and uncle, was burned in 1970. The present barn, of the same size and style, was moved from a nearby location in 1971.

Fernside Brook still flows along, and the path over the stepping stones to Job’s Hill, the site of the old mill and the ancient family burial lot are to be found within 69 acres of the present Homestead property. The surrounding land inspired Whittier to write such poems as Fernside Brook, Telling the Bees, and the Barefoot Boy, with specific locations so accurately described that they may still be readily identified today.

The Birthplace was formally opened in 1893 after former-Mayor James H. Carleton purchased the house and land and presented it to the Haverhill Whittier Club. The club established a Board of Trustees which to this day holds the deed in trust, with the intent and obligation that the house and grounds be maintained for visitors that the love and memory of Whittier might forever be cherished.

About the Poet.

John Greenleaf Whittier, born December 17, 1807 in the southwest Parlor of the Whittier Birthplace, was the first son and second child of John and Abigail (Hussey) Whittier. He grew up on the farm in a household with his parents, a brother and two sisters, aunt and uncle, and a constant flow of visitors and hired hands for the farm.

Whittier’s first poem to be seen in print appeared in 1826 in the Newburyport Free Press, where the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was editor. Under Garrison’s encouragement Whittier actively joined the abolitionist cause and edited newspapers in Boston and Hartford. He was associated with the Atlantic Monthly Magazine from 1857 until his death.In 1831, he brought out a book of prose works, “Legends of New England,” and the next year returned to his native town to run the farm after his father’s death, and later moved to Amesbury.

Until the Civil War, he became increasingly involved in the abolitionist cause, serving in numerous capacities on the local, state and national levels. He was also involved in the formation of the Republican Party.

With the publication of Snow-Bound in 1866, Whittier finally enjoyed a relatively comfortable life from the profits of his published works. It is Snow-Bound for which he will always be best remembered as a poet. Nearly every volume of his verses published thereafter was truly a best seller.

Whittier died on September 7, 1892 at a friend’s home in Hampton Falls, NH, and was buried with the rest of his family in Amesbury.