In the Woods
The Personal Pages of the  Williamson Family
Derry, New Hampshire, USA


These pages are a small, personal expression in a vast place known as the Web. The items you will find were placed here as a way of communicating with our families, friends and business associates. There are three of us in our household, along with three cats and a large tank of fish. We reside on the outskirts of Derry, New Hampshire... in the woods, so to speak.

However, the real reason that we call this web creation In the Woods is that we live just down the road from one of Robert Frost's New Hampshire homesteads. The Frost Farm, built in the late-1800s, is a large but simple two story, white clapboard farm house so typical of New Hampshire architecture of the period.

Robert L. Frost, one of the most popular American poets of his time, lived here with his wife and four children between 1900 and 1911. An airy barn and a woodshed are attached to the house, which is filled with period furnishings. A nature trail runs through nearby woods and fields. The grounds are a great place to take a walk or even have a picnic.

There is an entire section in these pages devoted to Robert Frost, but the focus is towards the time he spent here in Derry. It is ironic that the time he lived here formed so much of his poetry, yet he was never published until he had sold his farm here and left to live and write in England.

While you're here, please feel free to look around. Like the woods, this place keeps on changing with the days and the weeks and the seasons.


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Stopping in the Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.


- Robert Frost

Photo from our back deck, Derry, NH Jan 1996




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Don't these rocks belong in a wall that needs mending?
© Copyright 1997, 2001 
John Williamson. All rights reserved.  
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as belonging to their respective owners.
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