The original 12 December 1944 Quitclaim Deed, signed "Robert Lee Frost", giving his Shaftsbury, Vermont farm "The Gully" to his daughter-in-law and grandson after his son's suicide.
Boston, Massachusetts & Shaftsbury, Vermont: Office of E. H. Hewitt, Boston, Massachusetts & Town Clerk, Shaftsbury, Vermont, 12 January 1945. On 12 December 1944, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Robert Frost signed over his beloved Shaftsbury, Vermont farm - known to family and friends as "The Gully"- to his grandson, William Prescott Frost, and his daughter-in-law, Lillian Frost, the widow of his only son to survive to adulthood. This is the original executed, notarized, and recorded Quitclaim Deed, signed, quite atypically, by Frost with his full name, “Robert Lee Frost” on 12 December 1944. It is, among other things, a poignant artifact of the suicide of Frost’s son and the catalogue of personal loss suffered by Frost between 1934 and 1940.
This Quitclaim Deed consists of two 8.5 x 13 inch sheets, each with a red vertical double margin rule on the left and a single red vertical margin rule on the right, these two sheets attached at the head and folded within a 9 x 14 inch sheet of heavy, pale blue paper with two grommets, one at each upper corner. The paper is folded three times horizontally to form four panels, each measuring 3.5 x 9 inches. On the lower half of the top panel is a rectangular ink-stamp of the “TOWN CLERK’S OFFICE | SHAFTSBURY, VERMONT” with the recorded date, time, and record book location of the deed recordation (10:50 AM on 12 January 1945), as well as the signature of the town clerk. Frost’s notary wrote, in 11 lines (7 above and 4 below the Town Clerk’s ink-stamp): “Quitclaim Deed | Robert Lee Frost | to | Lillian Frost | and | William Prescott Frost | (joint tenants) | From the office of | E. H. Hewitt | 912 Bannister Hall | Boston, Mass.” The first sheet within specifies the transfer by Frost, for “One Dollar paid to my full satisfaction by my daughter-in-law, Lillian Frost, and her son, William Prescott Frost, my grand-son” for the specified property. The deed is hand-dated “twelfth” day of December 1944. At the foot of this first page Frost signed “Robert Lee Frost” and, to the left of his signature, two witnesses signed “Rosalind Gray Potter” and “Kathleen Johnston Morrison”. The second page notarizes the deed (in Cambridge, Massachusetts on the 12th of December 1944) with the signature of “Eustus H. Hewitt”.
Condition of the signed documents is fine, clean apart from five small, faint margin checks along the right edge – plausibly those of Frost as he reviewed the document. Condition of the attached blue paper cover is very good plus, lightly soiled with wear at the fold extremities.
Frost’s signature herein – “Robert Lee Frost” – is rarely seen thus. It is a delicious irony that the quintessential poetic voice of New England was named by his father for his hero, Robert E. Lee, the General-in-Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States during the Civil War.
Also noteworthy is the signature of Kathleen Johnston Morrison (1898-1989), Frost’s close friend, longtime secretary, and literary executor. “Kay” Morrison, nee Johnston, first met Frost in 1918 at Bryn Mawr. They remained "vaguely in touch" until the mid-1930s, when "the friendship blossomed. Kay was beautiful, charming, and... strikingly independent as well, a 'woman of tremendous vitality and strong views who could hold her own with Frost.'" Kay became Frost’s secretary in 1938, after the death of Frost’s wife, remaining so until his death in 1963, and thereafter serving as his literary executor.
Most important, however, is the story that underpins this deed. Lillian Edna Frost (nee LeBatt, 1905-1995) married Edwin Carol Frost (1902-1940) not long after her 18th birthday in 1923 and the next year gave Robert Frost his first grandson, William Prescott Frost (1924-1989). Lillian was already close with the Frost family and would remain so. Lillian and Carol long resided in South Shaftsbury. “Carol and Lillian, though hardworking and devoted to each other, were constantly plagued by financial and health problems that seemed out of control.” In particular, Carol suffered long-standing psychological problems – a manifestation of “the mental illness that plagued Frost’s sister, Jeanie, as well as Carol and Irma” and “represented the outer edge of his own instability.” On 9 October 1940 at 7:00 in the morning Frost received a call from his grandson, Prescott, telling him that Carol had shot himself in the head and been discovered by Prescott on the kitchen floor. After the deaths of his daughter, Marjorie, in 1934, and his wife, Elinor, in 1938, Frost had “to cope with the loss of a beloved son whose sense of failure in life he could not, despite his consistent efforts, undo.”
The gift of the property deeded herein was poignant. Lillian and Carol had begun their married life in South Shaftsbury. And, ironically, the reason Robert Frost bought this property is because he and Elinor had given their previous cottage to Carol and Lillian, and so were renting a place in North Bennington. They had been renting for the past year when, in 1928, Frost was on a long walk with the local mail clerk and beekeeper (yes, it is rural New England…) and saw “a little farm that he could not resist… It was located on 153 acres, with fifty in woods (mixed stands of maple, pine, and paper birches), the rest rolling patureland. The tiny eighteenth-century house had a long view to the west toward New York… The asking price for the farm was only $5,000 – a price Frost could easily afford, even as the rest of the country was going bankrupt.”
The Robert Frost Farm in South Shaftsbury, known as ‘The Gully,’ was closely associated with the poet's life and work between 1929 and 1938. “The Frost family spent their summers there from 1930 until the death of Frost’s wife in 1938, and considered the farm their main residence.” While this was Frost’s residence, he received two Pulitzer Prizes, in 1931 for Collected Poems and in 1937 for A Further Range. Frost wrote many of the poems found in the latter volume at ‘The Gully.’” Perennially anxious about money, Frost nonetheless deeded this 153-acre property to his daughter-in-law and grandson. “’The Gully’ remained in Frost's family until 1963 when it was sold to the artist Kenneth Noland.”
References: Parini, Frost: A Life; Dartmouth Libraries and Archives; NPS; ANB. Item #008717
Price: $5,500.00