George Perkins Marsh Boyhood Home
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George Perkins Marsh Boyhood Home
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| Location | Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, |
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| Coordinates | 43°37′49″N 72°31′5″W / 43.63028°N 72.51806°WCoordinates: 43°37′49″N 72°31′5″W / 43.63028°N 72.51806°W |
| Area | 40 acres (16 ha) |
| Built | 1805 |
| Architectural style | Queen Anne |
| Part of | Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park (#03000282) |
| NRHP Reference # | 67000023 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | June 11, 1967 |
| Designated NHL | June 11, 1967 |
| Designated CP | August 26, 1992 |
The George Perkins Marsh Boyhood Home, also known as the Marsh-Billings House, is the architectural centerpiece of Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, located on Vermont Route 12 in , United States. The house, built in 1805 and enlarged several times, is historically significant as the boyhood home of George Perkins Marsh (1801–82), an early conservationist, and as the home later in the 19th century of Frederick H. Billings (1823–90), a businessman and philanthropist who was a cofounder of the Northern Pacific Railroad. It is also architecturally significant as a high-quality example of Queen Anne architecture, alterations and enlargements commissioned by Billings and designed by Henry Hudson Holley. The house and its surrounding gardens were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1967. The 550-acre (220 ha) estate on which it stands was given by Mary French Rockefeller (the granddaughter of Frederick Billings) and Laurance Rockefeller to the people of the United States in 1992.
Charles Marsh, a prominent Vermont lawyer, built the core of the present house in 1805, as a fairly typical two-story five-bay Federal style house, and it is where he raised his family. His son George Perkins Marsh was born elsewhere in Woodstock in 1801, and grew up here before leaving for Dartmouth College when he was sixteen. The younger Marsh followed his father into both law and politics, winning election to Congress in 1834 as a Whig, and gaining appointment to diplomatic posts by Presidents John Tyler and Abraham Lincoln. Between the 1830s and 1860s he developed a philosophy of land stewardship which laid the foundation for the conservation movement in the United States with the 1864 publication of Man and Nature, or the Physical Geography as Modified by Human Behavior. This work, updated in 1874, gave a historical assessment of the decline of earlier societies because of a lack of stewardship, and made substantive calls for remedial actions to preserve the natural environment. Marsh died in 1882, never seeing his ideas fully realized.
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