Sargent House Museum

The Sargent House Museum was the home of sea merchants, American patriots, religious and community leaders. A fine example of Georgian architecture, it was built in 1782 for writer and activist Judith Sargent Murray, this country’s earliest champion of women’s equality, education and economic independence, and shared by her husband, Reverend John Murray, the founder of Universalism in America. Today, the house is displayed as it might have looked in 1790 – elegant winding staircases, period furnishings, gilt mirrors, glass, silver, textiles, oil portraits and personal items that create a real-life historical setting. Visitors will see Judith Sargent Murray’s dictionary and her published series, The Gleaner; and works of art by American painter John Singer Sargent, Judith Sargent Murray’s great-great nephew and an original founder of the museum. Visitors to the Sargent House Museum learn about the early history of Gloucester from its beginnings as a farming and lumbering outpost to its evolution into the country’s premier seaport.