The Mission House at 19 Main Street is one of the oldest buildings in Stockbridge, built in 1739 for John Sergeant, a young missionary who established the town as a 'praying town' — a planned community where Native Americans and English settlers would live together under Christian instruction. The experiment was short-lived but the house survives.
Now operated by Historic New England, the house is furnished as it might have appeared in the 1740s, with a collection of period furniture, household objects, and documents relating to the mission period. The house itself is a fine example of early New England frame construction, and the adjacent garden has been planted with herbs and kitchen plants appropriate to the eighteenth century. It is one of the few buildings in town that honestly confronts the colonial history behind the village's picturesque surface.