Clovernook

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Cary Cottage, childhood home of poets Alice and Phoebe Cary

The Clovernook Farm was the family home of Alice and Phoebe Cary (Poets). The farm was bought in 1813 by their father, Robert Cary in what is now North College Hill, Ohio. [1] He called the 27 acres Clovernook Farm. The farm was 10 miles north of Cincinnati. The farm was once part of a 1 million acre (4,000 km²) tract of Springfield Township that was purchased in 1787 by John Cleves Symmes, a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress and a pioneer in the Northwest Territory.

The three room home was built in 1832,[2] was home to the Cary family including nine children. Within a year of purchase, he laid out the first community in the area, called Clovernook, on the east side of Hamilton Avenue (now also known as U.S. Route 127). The small white Cary home still stands on the east side of Hamilton Avenue, now on the campus of Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired.[3]

When Alice was seventeen and Phoebe thirteen years old they began to write verses, which were printed in newspapers. And in 1849 they published a book called Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary. This made them well-known, and the next year they moved to New York City, where they gave themselves up to writing, and won much fame.

The sisters were raised in a Universalist household, their political and religious views were liberal and reformist. Alice wrote, besides poetry, several stories in prose, among which were The Clovernook Children and Snow Berries, a Book for Young Folks.

The small white Cary home still stands on the east side of Hamilton Avenue, now on the campus of Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired.[4] The home was purchased in 1903 by William Cooper Proctor, soap manufacturer, who had the home converted into a home for the blind.