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The Days of Henry Thoreau

A Biography

Dover Publications, Inc.

(1817-1823)

I

HENRY DAVID THOREAU was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on July 12, 1817, in what he thought "the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too." His birthplace was the easternmost upper chamber of his maternal grandmother's house, a gray, unpainted farmhouse on Virginia Road, which winds almost deserted along the eastern outskirts of the village, in the center of a great tract known as the Bedford levels.

Concord, some twenty miles northwest of Boston, is located on the plains surrounding the juncture of the Assabet and Sudbury Rivers which forms the Concord River, one of the principal tributaries of the Merrimack. In 1817 it was a quiet little town of two thousand, devoted chiefly to agriculture. Its stores and hotels were the stopping places for farmers and travelers en route from Boston to southern New Hampshire or western Massachusetts, and the fact that it then shared with Cambridge the seat of Middlesex County meant that its village square was often enlivened at the time of court sessions.

The town's citizens knew neither great wealth nor extreme poverty. At one end of the social spectrum were families like the Hoars in their square, white-frame Greek Revival homes on Main Street; at the other, a few ne'er-do-wells and former slaves who lived in shanties near Walden Pond on the outskirts of the village. The town was essentially a democracy, and no man felt the need of kneeling to his neighbor. The townspeople were almost exclusively of White Protestant stock whose ancestors had emigrated from England or Scotland long before the Revolution. The Reverend Dr. Ezra Ripley, minister of the First Parish in Concord, dominated the religious life of the community just as the steeple of his church dominated the town.

What was true of Concord then was true of most of the nation. It had primarily a rural, agricultural economy. The country was recovering rapidly from the misfortunes of the War of 1812. The threatening clouds of strife between the North and the South were not even on the horizon. With the inauguration of James Monroe in 1817, Thoreau's birth year, the nation was entering that long period of peace and prosperity known popularly as "the era of good feeling." The Thoreau family, however, had experienced a series of misfortunes, physically, politically, and financially, and were trying quite unsuccessfully to regain their former status.

II

The first of the Thoreaus to come to America was Jean (later Anglicized to John) Thoreau, Henry's grandfather, who was born in St. Helier on the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel about 1754, the son of Philippe Thoreau, a wine merchant. The family, originally of French Protestant ancestry, had taken refuge in Jersey after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and its name is said to have appeared frequently in the records of Tours, France, during the late Middle Ages.

Jean Thoreau came to America in 1773. He was apparently a member of the crew of a Jersey privateer that had been shipwrecked, and when rescued after suffering severe privations, he was brought to the colonies without any intention on his part of going there. Arriving in Boston, Massachusetts, he worked first in a sail loft and then as a cooper. When the Revolutionary War threw him out of work, he went back to privateering after participating briefly in the defense of Boston, and served for a time under Paul Revere, sharing in the booty seized from the Minerva Cartet.

After the war he established a shop on Long Wharf in Boston with a single hogshead of sugar as his entire stock. But his store rapidly prospered and he moved to Kings (now State) Street, where he entered a successful partnership with a Mr. Hayse. For a time he was also in business with a Mr. Phillips.

In 1781 he married Jane (Jennie) Burns, had ten children (several of whom died in infancy), and for many years lived at 51—53 Prince Street in a house he had purchased from his wife's family. His first wife died in 1796, and a year later he married Rebecca Kettell. On October 30, 1799, he purchased what is now the north end of the Colonial Inn on the square in Concord, next door to his sister-in-law and her husband, Deacon John White, and moved there in 1800. He died in 1801, at the age of forty-seven, after contracting a cold while patrolling the streets of Boston in a severe rainstorm when it was thought an anti-Catholic riot was imminent. (For some years he had suffered from tuberculosis). He left an estate worth $25,000, including his homes in Boston and Concord and some $12,000 in cash and securities. But when his widow died in 1814, it was discovered that not only had all his estate, except for the houses, disappeared, but her own personal estate had been encumbered in the care of her stepchildren. There was a great deal of whispering about the high-handedness of an executor who was said to have paid himself exorbitant fees for his work.

Jane Burns, Thoreau's paternal grandmother, was the daughter of a Scotch gentleman and Sarah Orrok, a Boston Quaker. Burns had had to give up his rich apparel of gems and ruffles and conform to the more simple garb of the Orrok family before he could gain their consent to the marriage, which occurred about 1750. He died during a return visit to Scotland, leaving a large estate which his heirs never succeeded in claiming. Sarah Orrok was the daughter of David Orrok and Hannah Tillet, both from old Quaker families. Hannah, in turn, was the daughter of Edward Tillet, a Boston sailmaker, who lived in a mansion on Prince Street and owned a number of slaves.

Thoreau's maternal grandfather, Rev. Asa Dunbar, was born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in 1745, and attended Harvard College, where in 1767, in his senior year, he led a rebellion against the food served in the college dining hall. When he was threatened with expulsion, his classmates called a meeting and announced that they would "resent it in a proper manner" should Dunbar be punished. The college administration capitulated after the students walked out of chapel, and Dunbar became the hero of his class. After graduation, he taught school for a time in Mystic, preached at Bedford, and eventually settled in Salem, Massachusetts, as the colleague of Rev. Thomas Barnard. He married Mary Jones, of a wealthy Tory family in Weston on October 22, 1772, and the marriage brought Dunbar himself under so much suspicion that he was obliged once or twice to declare publicly his sympathies for the American cause. Plagued by chronic illness, he resigned his church in April 1779, and turned to the study of law under Joshua Atherton, later attorney-general of New Hampshire. Settling down in Keene, New Hampshire, he was soon elected to the office of town clerk and admitted to the bar. He died on June 22, 1787, at the age of forty-one, after an illness of only thirty-six hours and, as a charter member of the Rising Sun Lodge No. 4 in Keene, was buried with full Masonic honors.

Mary Jones Dunbar, his wife, was born in 1748, the ninth of fifteen children, and lived until 1830, the only grandparent that Henry Thoreau was to know. When her Tory brothers were arrested during the Revolution and placed in Concord jail, she brought them food in which files were concealed, and with the help of horses which she had captured for them, they were successful in making their escape to Loyalist Canada. After Asa Dunbar's death, she for a time operated a tavern in her home in Keene. But in 1798 she married Captain Jonas Minott and settled on his farm on Virginia Road in Concord, Massachusetts. She was left a widow a second time in 1813. Most of the captain's possessions were sold at public auction and she was assigned half of his house as her widow's third. She promptly mortgaged the building to Josiah Meriam for $129 and moved into the village to occupy part of the house at 47 Lexington Road. Falling upon hard times, in 1815 she persuaded Rev. Ezra Ripley to petition the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts for financial aid.

Her father, Col. Elisha Jones, had lived in a fine old mansion in Weston, Massachusetts. He owned land in Adams, Pittsfield, Washington, Partridgefield, and Weston, Massachusetts, and was a slaveowner and an outspoken Loyalist. For ten years he represented his town in the Provincial Assembly and in January 1774 persuaded his townsmen to turn down Samuel Adams's plans for Committees of Correspondence and a Continental Congress. In May of that year he was chosen to represent the town at Governor Gage's Assembly, but with the growth of the revolutionary spirit in Weston, he soon lost his popularity and was forced to keep a military guard around his house for fear of being attacked. Eventually he took up residence in Boston under the protection of British troops. After his death in 1776, his estate was confiscated and eight of his sons were forced to flee into exile in Loyalist Canada, where several joined the British army. Henry David Thoreau thus came from a sturdy stock of men and women of principle who had the courage to stand up for their convictions even when they were in the minority.

III

John Thoreau, Henry's father, was born on Richmond Street in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 8, 1787, and moved to Concord with his father in 1800. After attending Lexington Academy for a year, he entered Deacon White's store in Concord as a clerk, and later clerked for a time in Salem. When he came of age in 1808, he mortgaged his share of his father's estate to his stepmother for one thousand dollars and opened a store of his own next to the hill burying-ground on the town square in Concord; he lived in quarters above the store. He prospered until he took in Isaac Hurd, a son of the local physician, as a partner. They soon quarreled and their partnership was dissolved with John Thoreau winning the case when the dissolution was challenged in court. For a time he tried selling things to the Indians in Bangor, Maine, with his brother-in-law, Caleb Billings, but then returned to Concord and on May 11,1812, married Cynthia Dunbar. During the War of 1812 he was commissary at Fort Independence in Boston harbor, and later received a bounty of 160 acres for his services. In 1814, in financial difficulties, he sold land adjacent to his mother-in-law's farm on Virginia Road, which he had purchased five years before. Eventually he took over the management of the Jarvis store in Concord center.

John Thoreau took great pleasure in music and often played the flute in the parish choir as a young man. He liked to read, particularly the classics, and handed many good books on to his son. He was active in the Concord Fire Society, a volunteer fire company, and in the early 1840s acted as its secretary. His neighbors thought of him as "an amiable and most lovable gentleman, but far too honest and scarcely sufficiently energetic for this exacting yet not over scrupulous world of ours." His favorite occupation was to sit by the stove in his little shop and chat by the hour. Throughout his married life he lived quietly, peacefully, and contentedly in the shadow of his wife, who towered a full head above him.

He was a quiet mousey sort of man and there is little evidence that he had much direct influence on his famous son. The two got along together well enough on the surface, but they had little understanding of each other's interests. Their relationship was one based more on toleration than on enthusiasm.

Mrs. Thoreau, however, was a much more dynamic person and she dominated not only her meek spouse, but, to a certain extent, the whole household. She had been born just thirty days before the death of her father in Keene, New Hampshire, on May 28, 1787. She moved to Concord with her mother and stepfather in 1798, and later often recalled for her son her quiet childhood on the Virginia Road farm. She had the reputation among her neighbors of being an excellent mother and housewife. In the midst of poverty she brought up her children to all the amenities of life and it was said that "if she had but a crust of bread for dinner, she would see that it was properly served." Poor as they were, each year at both Thanksgiving and Christmas she invited her poorer neighbors in for dinner. Throughout her life she showed compassion for the downtrodden, whether Negro, Indian, or white. Always active in the affairs of the town, in 1825 she joined the Concord Female Charitable Society (the "chattables" as her son Henry called them), which devoted itself to the care of the town's needy, and later served as its vice-president. She was also a member of the Bible Society and a founder of the Concord Women's Anti-Slavery Society. She saw to it that the family took its part in the social life of the village and often entertained with parties and sociables for the young people of the church or the town.

Mrs. Thoreau had a strong personality. The town shopkeepers learned that if they sent her anything but the best butter and flour, she would promptly return it. She never took a second grade of anything willingly. She was noted for speaking her mind frankly, particularly when she thought some moral issue was at question. She was a born reformer, and reformers are not always the easiest people to live with. There were numerous persons in Concord, her son's two biographers Ellery Channing and Frank Sanborn among them, who could not abide her and did not hesitate to say so. They complained that her tongue wagged from morning till night. There is no question about it; she was a born talker, but all agreed she was neither mean nor malicious.

She and her husband had a common interest in nature, an interest they were later to share with all their children. In the early days of their marriage they could often be found in their spare time, at almost any season of the year, exploring the banks of the Assabet, the cliffs at Fairhaven, or the shores of Walden Pond. One of their children, it is said, narrowly escaped being born on Lee's Hill, the site of one of their favorite rambles.

As Mrs. Thoreau grew older, she developed a regal presence that many who knew her commented upon. Old Dr. Shattuck used to say, "Cynthia would have graced a court if she had been born to it." And there are many hints that she often wished her social position higher than it was. Her husband's quiet, easygoing ways did not bring her the status she sought. But she was not an ungrateful woman, and there is every indication that theirs was a happy marriage.

Henry was the third of the four children of John and Cynthia Thoreau. Helen, the eldest, was born on October 22, 1812, a short five months after her parents' marriage. She was so quiet and retiring that few seem to have remembered her. Apparently she shared some of Henry's intellectual interests, because his few extant letters to her are more concerned with books and learning than those to other members of the family. After attending Concord Academy, she taught for a time in both Taunton, Massachusetts, and in Roxbury. Later she gave music lessons and taught painting in Concord, where the parents of her pupils are said to have particularly valued her "as an example of politeness" to their children.

John, Junior, born in 1815, has been aptly described as "his father turned inside out." He had charm and geniality—characteristics possessed by few of the Thoreaus—and an easy gregariousness. Although he displayed some intellectual interests, he lacked the deep seriousness of his younger brother. It was John who first showed an interest in ornithology and Henry later learned much of his bird lore from John's notebooks. Interestingly enough, most of Concord thought John the more promising of the two Thoreau boys.

Henry Thoreau, as has been said, was born on his maternal grandmother's farm on Virginia Road. Mrs. Minott had repaid the mortgage and Henry's father, still in financial difficulties, was attempting to run the farm and manage the Jarvis's store as well. His health however had deteriorated under the strain and he often found himself unable to walk the two miles into the village to the store. To add to his troubles, Joseph Hurd, who had already exacted exorbitant fees in his years as executor of the Thoreau family estate, now demanded further compensation for the final settlement. Only a few weeks after Henry's birth, his father was forced to sign over his share in the family home in Boston that he had mortgaged years before. It is said that in his proud honesty he even sold his gold wedding ring to satisfy his creditors.

Six weeks after Henry's birth, his twenty-three-year-old paternal uncle David Thoreau died. And so when the three-month-old baby was christened on October 12, 1817, by Rev. Ezra Ripley of the First Parish Church, he was named David Henry—a name he was to reverse when he reached maturity. Proud of his early stoicism, Henry often boasted in later years that he did not cry at the ceremony.

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Excerpted from The Days of Henry Thoreau by Walter Harding. Copyright © 1982 Walter Harding. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
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