Rokeby Museum : The Rokeby Site

Rokeby was one of the most prosperous farms in the Champlain Valley by the mid-nineteenth century, and the traces of its past are clearly marked on the landscape; the pastures where sheep and later dairy cattle grazed, and the orchards and hayfields are crossed today by walking trails. Eight agricultural outbuildings, several foundations, wells, and a sheep dip are all open to view.

Rokeby was settled in Vermont's early years of statehood by Thomas and Jemima Robinson, young Quaker emigres from Newport, Rhode Island.

It was here that Rowland Thomas Robinson provided fugitive slaves with the employment and education needed to start new lives, and that his son Rowland Evans Robinson built careers first in art then in literature.

In the last generation, two daughters, Rachel and Mary, followed their father's career in art while their brother Rowland and his wife Elizabeth tended both the family farm and the family heritage.

Rokeby is the best documented stop on the Underground Railroad in Vermont and, probably, the country.