Oral history interview with Mary Mathias

Oral history interview with Mary Mathias

Mary Mathias speaks of growing up in privilege in Scarsdale, New York, graduating from Wellesley College, then continuing her education at Brandeis and New York University, where she met and married Robert Houriet. Houriet worked as a reporter in New York and New Jersey, and in 1965, the Houriets bought land on Salem Lake in Derby, Vermont, with friend Bill Clark. They built a house and Mary moved there while five months pregnant and with her infant daughter in 1968. Mary describes how her husband quit work and began writing a book on communes, spending her first winter in Vermont alone, the success of Robert's book, and the development of the Frog Run Farm commune in East Charleston, Vermont in 1972. She discusses the leadership roles, her open marriage, gender roles, learning dairying, her divorce in 1975, and the break up of the farm in 1987.

14 July 2015

AudioFile1970s-27

MP3

Audio Files

Derby (Vt.)

Charleston (Vt.)

Permission to publish material from the Vermont 1970s Counterculture Project must be obtained from the Vermont Historical Society.

Blofson, Kate

Mathias, Mary, 1937-

West Brattleboro (Vt.)

2 hr., 30 min., 7 sec.

Vermont Historical Society Library, 60 Washington Street, Barre, VT 05641-4209