210 10 2124 https://sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/27c4a970e4d3f68d921a4fffc13cf29a.jpeg e9a96d277eac34d142399c2722536432 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Address on the Anniversary of Emancipation in the British West Indies Subject The topic of the resource Abolition Description An account of the resource This, Emerson’s first powerful attack on slavery, was delivered at the request of radical abolitionist Mary Merrick Brooks, wife of Concord lawyer Nathan Brooks. Following initial delivery of the address, Emerson—now a recognized antislavery advocate—was asked several times to reread it at abolition gatherings. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1844 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Abolition Concord Emerson https://sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/30a4525865879803c95d193faeaebbf0.jpeg 000cacf321c721d12b5e86befa6352b3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Cherokees Subject The topic of the resource The Cherokees Description An account of the resource During the period from about 1820 until the Civil War, a heightened awareness of a range of social issues was expressed through a number of active reform movements. Emerson, in his 1841 lecture “Man the Reformer,” assessed the climate of the times, “In the history of the world the doctrine of Reform had never had such scope as at the present hour.” There was not only an outpouring of concerned effort on behalf of the unrepresented and underrepresented—Blacks, Native Americans, the labor force, women, children, the mentally ill—but also a trend toward the idealistic reshaping of society through communal living and through education and moral reform. Emerson found that his liberal contemporaries—including some in Concord—hoped that he would speak out on the causes they embraced. In Emerson in Concord, Edward Waldo Emerson wrote of his father’s involvement in reform: “To all meetings held in Concord for the causes of Freedom, spiritual or corporal, he felt bound to give the sanction of his presence whether the speakers were good or bad; he officially welcomed Kossuth and his Hungarian exiles; he entertained John Brown at his house and gave largely from his, at that time very limited, means, to the fund for the furtherance and arming of the Kansas “Free State” immigration.” Emerson certainly spoke out for reform, in Concord and elsewhere. However, his commitment to reform activism did not come easily. Both temperamentally and philosophically, he had difficulty aligning himself with organized reform. Naturally reserved, he was repelled by the emotionalism that characterized the rhetoric of reform meetings. Moreover, his Transcendental focus was on the intellectual and moral perfection of the individual as the best method of reforming society. Even when he believed in the principles behind a reform effort, he could not support the elevation of society over the primacy of the individual. In his “New England Reformers” (1844), he declared: “ … union must be inward, and not one of covenants, and is to be reached by a reverse of the methods [men] use. The union is only perfect, when all the uniters are isolated … Each man, if he attempts to join himself to others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of his proportion; and the stricter the union, the smaller and the more pitiful he is. But leave him alone, to recognize in every hour and place the secret soul, he will go up and down doing the works of a true member, and, to the astonishment of all, the work will be done with concert, though no man spoke … The union must be ideal in actual individualism.” For this reason, Emerson was skeptical about the benefits of joining utopian communities like Brook Farm and Fruitlands. Nevertheless, Emerson surmounted his disinclination to become involved in reform. He did, in fact, become impassioned about certain issues, foremost among them the abolition of slavery, and repeatedly rose to the occasion when asked to make a public statement. Some of his most rousing addresses were delivered in Concord, which reinforced the town’s reputation as a reform stronghold. Concordians were already sensitive to the issue of slavery by the 1830s. A number of the town’s residents belonged to the Middlesex County Antislavery Society, established in 1834. When the Concord Ladies’ Antislavery Society was formed in 1837, Lidian Emerson was one of its founding members. Others in Emerson’s family—his step-grandfather Ezra Ripley, his brother Charles, and his aunt Mary Moody Emerson—were outspoken in their condemnation of slavery. The Hoars and the Thoreaus were abolitionists, as were many others among his friends and associates. His outrage over slavery developed in an atmosphere that encouraged public expression. Emerson delivered an antislavery address in Concord in November of 1837, in response to the murder of abolitionist publisher Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois. Focusing as much on the right of free speech as on the wrong of slavery, the speech disappointed those who wanted a stronger statement from him. Between 1837 and 1844, Emerson was moved by the unfolding of events that, in their threat to the individual and to conscience, could not be ignored. By 1844, the annexation of Texas was imminent. Emerson was disgusted with the failure of government and political leaders like Daniel Webster to stop the spread of slavery. When Concord abolitionist Mary Merrick Brooks asked him to speak at the Ladies’ Antislavery Society celebration of the anniversary of emancipation in the British West Indies, he agreed. On August 1, 1844, in the Court House on Monument Square, he delivered a powerful speech that placed him among effective public supporters of abolition. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 further fueled Emerson’s antislavery activism. In the 1850s, he spoke at meetings around the country, opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and supported radical abolitionist John Brown. Although he had hesitated in throwing his energies into the cause, he ultimately served in Concord and beyond as the voice of social conscience. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1838 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Concord Emerson Native Americans https://sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/3603f051d95395e5890f862a97b66ddd.jpeg 56d611a9a9d3a1d8338bb572d8bedec1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Margaret Fuller Subject The topic of the resource Margaret Fuller Description An account of the resource Emerson’s relationship with Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)—writer, conversationalist, journalist, feminist, social reformer, and original editor of The Dial—was complex. The two met in August of 1835. When Fuller first stayed in Concord with the Emersons in 1836, Emerson responded to the qualities that so distinguished her. He wrote to his brother William on August 8, 1836, “An accomplished lady is staying with Lidian now[,] Miss Margaret Fuller … She is quite an extraordinary person for her apprehensiveness her acquisitions & her powers of conversation. It is always a great refreshment to see a very intelligent person. It is like being set in a large place. You stretch your limits & dilate to your utmost size.” Fuller visited the Emersons frequently in the 1830s and early 1840s, sometimes staying for weeks at a time. She and Emerson corresponded as well, with particular frequency in 1839 and 1840. There is no doubt that Emerson appreciated and benefited from Fuller’s learning, brilliance in conversation, sense of humor, and affectionate nature. Elizabeth Hoar commented on Fuller’s influence on him, “ … her power of bringing out Mr. Emerson has doubled my enjoyment of that blessing to be in one house and room with him.” At several points, Emerson expressed the hope that Fuller would live in Concord and help create the ideal intellectual community he envisioned. But he also had difficulty in dealing with her intensity and her demands for intellectual and personal reassurance. Sarah Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, the first child of Timothy and Margarett Crane Fuller. Her demanding father—a lawyer and congressman—provided her with an education well beyond the standard for girls at the time. Early on, she developed disciplined habits of reading and study that allowed her to learn and grow independently throughout the rest of her life. As a young child, she learned Latin from her father, later studied Greek, German, classics of English and European literature, and philosophy. Frederic Henry Hedge, William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke, and others who would later be identified with Transcendentalism formed part of her early social life and helped shape the course of her thought and learning. The Fullers moved to Groton, Massachusetts, in 1833. Timothy Fuller died of cholera in 1835, making it necessary for Margaret to contribute to the support of her younger siblings. She turned to teaching, and wrote for periodical publication. In 1836, after Elizabeth Peabody’s departure from Alcott’s Temple School, Fuller took her place as Alcott’s assistant. Margaret Fuller enjoyed the intellectual respect of Emerson and his associates. She attended Emerson’s Phi Beta Kappa address in 1837 and meetings of the Transcendental Club. In 1840, she became the first editor of The Dial—a position for which she was never paid and which she passed on to Emerson in 1842—and a major contributor to it as well. Her “The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men, Woman versus Women” appeared in the July, 1843 issue. She later expanded it into Woman in the Nineteenth Century, which sold out within a week of its publication in 1845. Fuller also published works that she had translated from the German. Emerson and others observed that Fuller’s powers of conversation surpassed her ability to write effectively. He noted in his journal on May 4, 1837, “Miss Edgeworth has not genius, nor Miss Fuller; but the one has genius-in-narrative, & the other genius-in-conversation.” Beginning in 1839, following the lead of Elizabeth Peabody, she held series of conversations at Peabody’s circulating library and bookstore on West Street in Boston, and elsewhere. Her audiences—largely although not exclusively women—included Peabody and her sister Sophia, Lidian Emerson, Elizabeth Hoar, Sarah Clarke (sister of James Freeman Clarke), Sophia Ripley (Mrs. George), Lydia Maria Child, and Ann Phillips (Mrs. Wendell). The conversations showcased her learning and her ability to stimulate others to meaningful thought and communication. At the same time, they provided income. In the summer of 1843, Fuller traveled west. She wrote about what she saw on the trip—including the shameful treatment of Native Americans—in Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844). This book impressed Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, who subsequently offered Fuller the position of literary editor for his paper. Fuller worked for Greeley in New York from 1844 to 1846. Among the books she reviewed was Emerson’s Essays: Second Series (1844). In addition to book reviews, she wrote pieces on a variety of social issues. For much of her editorship, she lived with the Greeleys. In 1846, Fuller seized the opportunity to accompany textile merchant Marcus Spring and his wife Rebecca to Europe. Greeley paid her in advance to serve as foreign correspondent for the Tribune. Emerson wrote her a letter of introduction to Thomas Carlyle and joined her family and friends in saying farewell in Cambridgeport. It was the last time they would see one another. Fuller met with Harriet Martineau, Carlyle, Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, and exiled Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini in England, and in Paris visited George Sand. She went on to Italy, where, living in Rome from 1847, she was caught up in the cause of Italian independence and unification. She recorded her observations on the democratic uprising and the ultimate fall of Rome to French forces fighting on behalf of the pope. In 1847, she met and fell in love with Giovanni Angelo, marchese d’Ossoli, an impoverished Italian nobleman ten years her junior. They had a son (Angelino) in 1848 and married at an undetermined point. Fuller assisted the revolutionary cause with hospital work; Ossoli served with the Civic Guard. After Rome fell, the couple and their child went to Florence. In July of 1850, the Ossolis boarded the Elizabeth, bound for New York. The voyage was disastrous. The captain died of smallpox. Angelino came down with the disease and had to be tended constantly. Finally, the ship was wrecked in a hurricane off Fire Island, New York. Fuller, her husband, and her child all drowned, and her manuscript-in-progress on the Roman revolution was lost. When he learned of Fuller’s death, Emerson sent Thoreau to New York to look for her body—in vain, it turned out—and to see if any of her papers might be salvaged. Within a few weeks of the shipwreck, William Henry Channing initiated the preparation of a biography. Written and edited by Channing, Emerson, and James Freeman Clarke, the two-volume Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli was assembled quickly and published in 1852. By all assessments an incomplete, loosely seamed piece of work incorporating heavily and sometimes misleadingly edited primary material, the Memoirs presented to the world a more acceptable, less complicated woman than the real Fuller had been. In his initial shock over Fuller’s death, Emerson mourned her in his journal: “On Friday, 19 July, Margaret dies on rocks of Fire Island Beach within sight of … the shore. To the last her country proves inhospitable to her; brave, eloquent, subtle, accomplished, devoted, constant soul! If nature availed in America to give birth to many such as she, freedom & honour & letters & art too were safe in this new world. She bound in the belt of her sympathy and friendship all whom I know and love … ” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Alfred Winslow Hosmer Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1896 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Concord Emerson Fuller https://sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/ce66f277320ed1563903a2d30124d788.jpeg 388bb4195ed08c312c90a26ec6d66191 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Elizabeth Palmer Peabody Subject The topic of the resource Elizabeth Palmer Peabody Description An account of the resource Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894) devoted her long and full life to the expression of Transcendental idealism in a variety of forms. Greatly admired by some of her contemporaries as a model of passionate commitment, she was dismissed by others as meddlesome and absent-minded. Abolitionist minister Theodore Parker praised her as “a woman of most astonishing powers … many-sidedness and largeness of soul … rare qualities of head and heart … A good analyst of character, a free spirit, kind, generous, noble.” Margaret Fuller, on the other hand, was impatient with Peabody’s inattention to detail, and Emerson—who admired much about her—could not keep himself from commenting on her careless grooming. Novelist Henry James caricatured her mercilessly as Miss Birdseye in The Bostonians (1886). Teacher and educational reformer, founder of the kindergarten in America, abolitionist, opponent of European autocratic despotism, friend of political refugees, advocate of Native American rights and education, of woman’s suffrage, and of world peace, Peabody worked unceasingly toward the improvement of society. In the 1840s, she ran a circulating library and bookstore at 13 West Street in Boston, providing the Transcendentalists with volumes of foreign literature and philosophy. Margaret Fuller conducted some of her conversations at 13 West Street, and the Brook Farm utopian community was planned there. Moreover, Peabody was a publisher at a time when few women were involved in that business. She published Emancipation by Dr. William Ellery Channing (her mentor), several volumes by Hawthorne, two of the four volumes of The Dial, and the short-lived journal Aesthetic Papers (1849), which included the first appearance in print of Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government” (“Civil Disobedience”). Peabody was also a gifted linguist, familiar with some dozen languages, and a prolific writer on education, reform, language, history, art, and other topics. Sister-in-law of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who married her sister Sophia in 1842, and of educational reformer Horace Mann, who married her sister Mary in 1843, she associated with all in Emerson’s Transcendental circle. In the late 1830s, she visited the Emersons in Concord, and later lived here during two periods of her life (with her widowed sister Mary Mann from 1859, and with her brother Nathaniel from 1878). Peabody’s most lasting impact was as a teacher and educational reformer. Sharing Bronson Alcott’s belief that education is a matter of drawing out inner knowledge (particularly moral and spiritual), she was involved in a number of innovative educational ventures, culminating in the establishment of the kindergarten in America from 1859. In 1832, she held the first of her “reading parties,” or “conferences,” for women. The sessions consisted of reading, lecture, and dialogue on a chosen topic. Margaret Fuller later applied this interactive process in her conversation series. From 1834 to 1836, Peabody served as Alcott’s assistant at the Temple School in Boston. Her Record of a School, prepared from her manuscript notes on Alcott’s dialogues with his students, was published in 1835. Alcott’s two-volume Conversations with Children on the Gospels (1836-1837) was edited by Alcott from Peabody’s notes. In the 1850s, she promoted the teaching of history through color-coded chronological grid charts introduced by Josef Bem, and lived and taught at the Raritan Bay Union in Eagleswood, New Jersey, one of the cooperative communities that sprang up in the mid-19th century. In 1859, Peabody took up the most significant educational work of her life, the promotion of early childhood education as pioneered by German educator Friedrich Froebel, who had worked with very young children and formulated an approach based on organized play, the use of the hands and the senses, and involvement with nature. Peabody established the first formally organized American kindergarten in America in 1860, and for the rest of her life worked with missionary zeal to advance the cause. In the classroom, in the Foreign Library, and in her efforts on behalf of oppressed groups and individuals, Elizabeth Peabody demonstrated determination to bring reality in line with philosophy, in essence forging an applied version of Emerson’s Transcendentalism. Although he did not take Elizabeth Peabody as seriously as he did Margaret Fuller, Emerson nevertheless recognized her intellectual gifts. He wrote of her in one of his notebooks: “A wonderful literary head, with extraordinary rapidity of association, and a methodising faculty which enabled her to weave surprising theories very fast, & very finely, from slight materials. Of another sex, she would have been a first-rate academician; and, as it was, she had the ease & scope & authority of a learned professor or high literary celebrity in her talk. I told her I thought she ought to live a thousand years, her schemes of study & the necessities of reading which her inquiries implied, required so much.” Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Undated Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Concord Elizabeth Palmer Peabody Emerson https://sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/27cf220c9a4479bbcddb39369ac3dbb2.jpeg f83fc89da059321ad7c981da1329ad22 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Charles King Newcomb Subject The topic of the resource Charles King Newcomb Description An account of the resource “ … I wish you to know that I have Dolon in black & white, & that I account Charles K a true genius: his writing fills me with joy, so simple so subtle & so strong is it. There are sentences in Dolon worth the printing the Dial that they may go forth."—RWE to Margaret Fuller, June 9, 1842 “Charles Newcomb … proves the rich possibilities in the soil, tho’ his result is zero.”—RWE to Caroline Sturgis Tappan, October 13, 1857 “Thanks for your note … & for the surprising news of St. Charles—I had thought he would content himself with dreaming, that is creating his Europe, without descending to the vulgar method of eyes. But he actually went to war, & why not now to London? But being there, I doubt his early return. Nothing but bad news from his bankers would bring him home, him for whom old civilization has an endless charm, & America onl[y] a solitude.”—RWE to Benjamin B. Wiley, December 29, 1871 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Undated Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Concord Emerson Newcomb https://sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/710591db5fe402ff47f6323d2755e55a.jpeg 4fdccf5bca6f6322e3aea32b216ff94f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronson Alcott Subject The topic of the resource Bronson Alcott Description An account of the resource Educator, philosopher, lecturer, poet, essayist, diarist, and reformer Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) was Emerson’s close friend for more than forty-five years. Emerson valued Alcott from their first acquaintance. Long after he had realized Alcott’s impracticality, he was still invigorated by the man’s idealism. Judging Alcott a “world-builder” and “Genius,” Emerson wrote Margaret Fuller in May, 1837: “ … he has more of the godlike than any man I have ever seen and his presence rebukes & threatens & raises. He is a teacher. I shall dismiss for the future all anxiety about his success. If he cannot make intelligent men feel the presence of a superior nature the worse for them—I can never doubt him. His Ideal is beheld with such unrivalled distinctness, that he is not only justified but necessitated to condemn & to seek to upheave the vast Actual and cleanse the world.” Even though he was sometimes skeptical of the efforts into which Alcott threw his energies, Emerson supported him emotionally and often financially through periods of turmoil and despondency. Born at Spindle Hill near Walcott, Connecticut, Alcott was largely self-educated. As a young man, he made his living as a peddler in New York and Pennsylvania. He traveled south, where he observed slavery first-hand. In 1823, he began teaching in Connecticut, in 1828 moved to Boston, and in 1830 married Abigail May. The couple moved to the Philadelphia area, where their first two daughters, Anna and Louisa, were born. Back in Boston in 1834, Alcott—with the help of educator and reformer Elizabeth Palmer Peabody—established a progressive school in the Masonic Temple building. At the Temple School, rather than attempting to impose knowledge on his students, he employed the Socratic conversational method to draw from them the spiritual and moral truth that he felt they possessed innately. With Elizabeth Peabody and (later) Margaret Fuller as his assistants, he operated the school until 1838. Its closing was forced by the withdrawal of students by parents alarmed at his teaching methods and at some of the subjects he broached. The publication of Alcott’s Conversations with Children on the Gospels (1836-1837)—Alcott’s edited record of his dialogues with his pupils—had made him a target for criticism. In 1840, Alcott moved his wife and growing family into the “Dovecote,” a Hosmer family cottage in Concord. His plan was to support the family by farming and day labor. Emerson paid Edmund Hosmer the rent. That year, his “Orphic Sayings”—described by Emerson as “a string of Apothegms”—appeared in The Dial. Emerson had mixed feelings about them,” but nevertheless found merit in some, and felt they should be published. On April 8, 1840, he wrote Margaret Fuller of the “Orphic Sayings,” “ … what he read me this P.M. are not very good. I fear he will never write as well as he talks.” Late in 1840 and into early 1841, the Emersons gave some thought to having the Alcotts live with them, but—probably for the best—nothing came of the idea. In January, 1841, Alcott was jailed for nonpayment of his poll tax, a form of protest against slavery for which Thoreau also was later jailed. In 1842, Alcott traveled to England, where he found support for his educational theories. The trip was financed largely by Emerson. Alcott returned to America with reformer Charles Lane, with whom he founded Fruitlands, a utopian community in Harvard, Massachusetts, in 1843. The Alcotts moved there in June. The Fruitlands experiment focused on manual labor, vegetarianism, religious harmony, education, and the balanced development of the individual. Relying on highly idealistic, relatively ineffective methods of farming, the reformers found it difficult to sustain the community, in consequence of which Mrs. Alcott and her children suffered considerable hardship. Moreover, Lane’s subordination of individual to community did not sit well with Bronson Alcott’s Transcendental individualism and conflicted with the needs of his family. The Alcotts left Fruitlands in January, 1844. Bronson was deeply depressed over its failure. In 1845, partly with funding provided by Emerson, the Alcotts bought a house in Concord, on Lexington Road. They called it Hillside. (Later, under Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ownership, it would be renamed Wayside.) Alcott made repairs and improvements to the old place and, together with Thoreau, built Emerson a Gothic summerhouse. The Alcotts remained at Hillside until 1848, when they moved to Boston, where Bronson offered conversational series and Abba did missionary work among the urban poor. They returned to Concord in 1857 and settled in the Orchard House. Bronson’s particular talents were locally recognized between 1859 and 1865, when he served Concord as Superintendent of Schools. In the mid-1850s, Alcott began to make conversational tours out west and to receive some of the positive public attention that had eluded him. He wrote and published volumes of prose and verse, including Emerson (1865). The success of his daughter Louisa as a popular author finally provided some financial stability for the family. Bronson Alcott founded the Concord School of Philosophy in 1879. Held summers between 1879 and 1888, the school was managed with the assistance of Frank Sanborn and William Torrey Harris, who ran it after Alcott suffered a debilitating stroke in 1882. In 1884—two years after Emerson’s death—the program of lectures was devoted in part to Emerson’s thought and work. Alcott died in 1888. Emerson never lost his appreciation of the best in Alcott. He wrote of Alcott in a letter to Emily Mervine Drury on November 23, 1853: “ … there are few persons so well worth seeing. I am very sensible of the defects of his genius & character, but he is a rare piece of nature, and is a man who stands in poetic relations to his friends & to the whole world.” Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Undated Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Bronson Alcott Concord Emerson https://sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/7e4a7efe3e0baba0718480d280a45438.jpeg 9eb0967d6dbc7c1b465d323082901b07 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ellery Channing Subject The topic of the resource Ellery Channing Description An account of the resource Poet William Ellery Channing (1817-1901)—nephew of minister William Ellery Channing, the “father of Unitarianism”—was one of those bright young men in whom Emerson found genius and whose writing he published in The Dial in the 1840s. The two became friends in 1842, when Channing stayed with the Emersons while looking for a home in Concord for himself and his wife Ellen (Margaret Fuller’s sister). After the Channings moved to Concord and became Emerson’s neighbors in 1843, Ellery and Waldo grew close. Channing also became a particular friend of Thoreau, the first biography of whom he would later write (Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist, published in 1873) and a friend of Bronson Alcott and Hawthorne. Emerson was an early champion of Channing’s poetry. He wrote on June 21, 1840, to Margaret Fuller, “Ellery Channing has granted the verses [for The Dial], which fills me with joy. They are what I wanted the Journal for.” He soon saw Channing’s inconsistency and weaknesses as a poet, but continued to admire his talent. He wrote to Margaret Fuller on December 12, 1842, “A true poet that child is, and nothing proves it so much as his worst verses: sink or swim,—hit or miss, he writes on, & is never responsible.” To Caroline Sturgis, he wrote in August of 1842, “He (Ellery) has great selfpossession, great simplicity & mastery of manner, very good sense, & seems to me to be very good company to live with … If he could only master his negligent impatient way of writing—this impatience of finishing, his sweet wise vein of thought & music would have no rival.” Others were not so generous in their estimation of Channing’s work. Edgar Allan Poe cuttingly reviewed his first published volume of poetry (Poems, 1843): “His book contains about sixty-three things, which he calls poems, and which he no doubt seriously supposes them to be. They are full of all kinds of mistakes, of which the most important is that of their having been printed at all.” Even Channing’s good friend and traveling companion Thoreau characterized his work as “sublimo-slipshod.” Son of physician and Harvard Medical School professor Walter Channing, Ellery lost his mother when he was five. He was raised by an aunt in Milton, sent to the Round Hill School in Northampton, and later to the Boston Latin School. He entered Harvard in 1834 but, unable to submit himself to college regulations, left after a few months. His father’s continuing financial support made it unnecessary for Channing actively to pursue a career. He wrote poetry, homesteaded for a while in Illinois, and moved to Cincinnati, where he met and married Ellen Fuller. The Channings settled in Concord in 1843 specifically to be near Emerson, who had already seen some of Ellery’s work into print in The Dial. Channing was as unwilling to accept the financial and emotional responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood as he had earlier been to fit into life at Harvard. Although he and Ellen had five children, he was absent from the family for long periods of time. In 1844 and 1845, he lived in New York and worked at the Tribune. In 1845, he traveled to Europe through the largesse of friends. In Concord, the Channings lived first on the Cambridge Turnpike, then moved to Lexington Road, later to Punkatasset Hill, and after that to Main Street. From 1855, while Channing edited the New Bedford Mercury, they lived away from Concord. Ellen died in 1856, not long after the birth of their fifth child. Channing returned to Concord after his connection with the Mercury ended in 1858. He lived here for the rest of his life, spending his final years in Frank Sanborn’s home. He remained intimate with Emerson, who never ceased to value his friend’s judgment of literature and character. On April 11, 1850, Emerson expressed his feelings for Channing in a letter to Margaret Fuller: “I go home tomorrow & the next day … I shall find, I trust, Ellery full of thoughts, if fitful & moody as ever. I could only wish he were born as much for his own happiness, & for yours, as he is for mine. To me, he is from month to month, from year to year, an incomparable companion, inexhaustible even if it be, & more’s the pity, the finest luxury, rather than a necessity of life.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Alfred Winslow Hosmer Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1896 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Channing Concord Emerson https://sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/273d5bb3b16102a8198afbcdfb1fe103.jpeg 18da84dc688591d629ed6877a5acd922 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Henry David Thoreau Subject The topic of the resource Henry David Thoreau Description An account of the resource By the late 1830s, Emerson had befriended Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Born in Concord, Thoreau was, over the course of his life, an author, lecturer, naturalist, student of Native American life and collector of Native artifacts, surveyor, pencil-maker, social critic and active opponent of slavery. He returned to Concord after graduating from Harvard in 1837. In 1841, he joined the Emerson household as a handyman and caretaker. He stayed with the Emersons from 1841 to 1843, and again in 1847 and 1848 (while Emerson made his second European trip). A close bond developed between the two men. Emerson—fourteen years older than Thoreau, much-demanded as a lecturer and well-known as a writer—filled the roles of teacher and patron as well as friend to Thoreau. As time passed, the master/pupil aspect of the relationship became less satisfactory and less appropriate. But in the early 1840s, it suited both of them. In the early days of their friendship, Emerson revealed in his journal obvious affection for and appreciation of Thoreau. On February 17, 1838, for instance, he recorded in his journal, “My good Henry Thoreau made this else solitary afternoon sunny with his simplicity & clear perception.” On September 1st of the same year, he referred to Thoreau in a letter to his aunt Mary Moody Emerson as “a brave fine youth.” Writing his brother William on June 1, 1841, he described Thoreau as “a scholar & a poet & as full of buds of promise as a young apple tree.” Later, he would write with regret of Thoreau’s failure to fulfill this promise. Whatever distance eventually grew between Emerson and Thoreau, Lidian and the Emerson children were always fond of Thoreau. In Emerson in Concord, his lengthy Social Circle biography of his father (published in 1888 in the Second Series of Memoirs of Members of the Social Circle in Concord; also published separately), Edward Waldo Emerson recalled Thoreau’s stable presence, his usefulness about the house and garden, and his particular rapport with children. Under Emerson’s influence, young Thoreau increasingly turned his thoughts to writing. While living in the Emerson house in the early 1840s, he enjoyed Emerson’s encouragement, support, and advice. He also benefited from access to Emerson’s library, which included works of Oriental literature of great interest to Thoreau, books not readily available elsewhere. And when members of the Transcendental Club came to visit, Thoreau was welcome among them. Thoreau contributed to The Dial during this period, and edited the April, 1843 issue for Emerson. His first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, appeared in 1849, his Walden in 1854. Emerson and Thoreau shared the common bond of grief from January, 1842, when Thoreau’s brother John died of lockjaw and Emerson’s first child, Waldo, died of scarlet fever. By 1850, the friendship between the two was strained. Despite their respect for one another, Emerson’s early sense of Thoreau’s literary promise and Thoreau’s initial idealization of Emerson did not quite match the reality of how each conducted his life. Thoreau did not vigorously pursue the visible success as a writer of which Emerson thought him capable. Emerson increasingly became a man of the world and traveled in literary and social circles that Thoreau disdained. When Thoreau died of tuberculosis in 1862, Emerson delivered his eulogy at the First Parish. It was later expanded for publication in the August, 1862 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The piece, titled “Thoreau,” clearly conveyed Emerson’s sense of disappointment in Thoreau. Emerson commented, for example, on Thoreau’s combativeness: “There was somewhat military in his nature not to be subdued; always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition … It cost him nothing to say No; indeed, he found it much easier than to say Yes. It seemed as if his first instinct on hearing a proposition was to controvert it, so impatient was he of the limitations of our daily thought. This habit, of course, is a little chilling to the social affections … ” Emerson’s final judgment on what Thoreau had achieved affected his friend’s reputation well into the 20th century: “Had his genius been only contemplative, he had been fitted to his life, but with his energy and practical ability he seemed born for great enterprise and for command; and I so much regret the loss of his rare powers of action, that I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition. Wanting that, instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry-party.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Samuel Worcester Rowse Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1854 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Emerson Thoreau https://sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/38b494da2362162002f5411644d954dc.jpeg 6a9810fda89a551e5faac28f3755b422 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Elizabeth Hoar Subject The topic of the resource Elizabeth Hoar Description An account of the resource Emerson regarded Elizabeth Hoar (1814-1878) as a member of his family as well as of the thoughtful circle of individuals drawn to his home for discussion and friendship. She was the daughter of lawyer Samuel Hoar and sister of Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (lawyer, judge, Massachusetts senator, Attorney General of the United States in the cabinet of President Ulysses S. Grant, representative in the United States Congress, and Emerson’s friend), of George Frisbie Hoar (lawyer and representative and senator in Congress), and Edward Sherman Hoar (Thoreau’s friend and traveling companion). Educated at the old Concord Academy, she was learned—a proficient Greek scholar—and a woman of powerful intellect, deep religious sensibility, and reform sympathies. Elizabeth Hoar was close to many with whom Emerson associated. An intimate of the Thoreaus, Channings, and Hawthornes, she was a friend of Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller (whose Boston conversation series she attended), of Fuller’s brother Richard, Caroline Sturgis (later Tappan), and Anna Barker (Ward). While abroad, she met Thomas Carlyle and other literary people whom Emerson knew from his European trips. In 1833, Charles Chauncy Emerson—Waldo’s younger brother, a lawyer—and Elizabeth Hoar became engaged. Charles managed Sam Hoar’s Concord law office while the Squire served in Washington as a representative in Congress, beginning in 1835. The couple made plans to marry in September, 1836. The Emersons renovated their home in anticipation of the newlyweds living with them. Emerson and Elizabeth Hoar were both dealt a severe personal blow in May, 1836, when Charles died of tuberculosis. Elizabeth continued to live in her parents’ Main Street home. Emerson expressed the profound respect he felt for Elizabeth Hoar many times—for example, in a letter he wrote her on November 23, 1839: “Where is my letter to which I give you fair challenge? You are a sovereign woman & shall do as you choose, but in some hour of benevolence you may remember those who are bound in the bonds of analyzing the Age. I do not wish to know the opinions of celeb[ra]ted reformers or celebrated conversers, or indeed of celebrated leaders of either sex. They are all officers & through their lips I hear always Mr Million speak. But you are queen of yourself & in your privacy & detachment possess a superiority to which we must all defer. Always I gladly hear what you say as the sentence of an intelligent umpire, and, so pedantic are my habits, should gladlier read what you write.” Although the opportunity to become a member of the Emerson family was denied to Elizabeth Hoar, Emerson confided in her throughout their lives and referred to her as his sister. His mother, Lidian, and the Emerson children all felt deep, abiding affection for her. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Undated Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Public Library Concord Emerson Hoar https://sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/cac7d95f087f0d9aae9aaa4fcf044286.jpeg a0c75acf100683d5db5302940af6cdc8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Nathaniel Hawthorne Subject The topic of the resource Nathaniel Hawthorne Description An account of the resource Salem-born author Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) lived in Concord at three different periods of his life—from 1842 to 1845, from 1852 to 1853, and from 1860 until his death in 1864. On July 9, 1842, Hawthorne married Sophia Amelia Peabody in Boston and brought her to the Manse in Concord to live. At the urging of Elizabeth Hoar and Emerson, he had rented the old house, which stood vacant following the death in 1841 of Ezra Ripley. Before the newlyweds moved in, Elizabeth Hoar and Cynthia Thoreau (Henry’s mother) prepared the house for their arrival. The Hawthornes were blissfully happy in the Manse. They delighted in the beauty of the Concord landscape and in the amusements it offered. Una, the first of their three children, was born here in 1844. Moreover, although shy, Hawthorne enjoyed the company of Thoreau, Ellery Channing, and other local residents, and of visitors as well. Emerson and Hawthorne did not readily warm up to one another. The two were temperamentally and intellectually dissimilar. Hawthorne’s reticence made him difficult to get to know. Furthermore, Emerson did not particularly admire Hawthorne’s writing, which he felt lacked substance, going so far as to describe it in one journal entry as “not good for anything.” For his part, Hawthorne was impatient with the mystical vagueness of Transcendentalism and its chief proponent. He wrote in his journal on August 15, 1842 of Emerson as “the mystic, stretching his hand out of cloud-land, in vain search for something real … a great searcher for facts; but they seem to melt away and become unsubstantial in his grasp.” In an effort to break down the barriers that hindered their friendship, Emerson asked Hawthorne to make a two-day walking trip to the Shaker village in Harvard, Massachusetts, in October of 1842. If forging a close relationship was the object of the excursion, it was a failure. However, it did provide an opportunity for the two to come to a better understanding of one another. Despite Emerson’s opinion of Hawthorne’s work, between leaving the Manse in 1845 and returning to Concord in 1852, Hawthorne finally achieved recognition as a major American author. Until 1850, he had served a long, slow literary apprenticeship and made a modest reputation based on stories first published in gift books and periodicals and then collected in book form. His situation changed radically when Ticknor, Reed and Fields (later Ticknor and Fields)—America’s foremost literary publishers—added him to their stable of New England authors. With the publication of The Scarlet Letter, his first romance, in 1850, they became his primary publishers. Early in June of 1852, Hawthorne moved his family back to Concord, where he and Sophia had bought and refurbished the Alcotts’ first house on Lexington Road. Formerly called Hillside, the house was renamed the Wayside. In 1852, Franklin Pierce, the Democratic nominee for the presidency and Hawthorne’s friend from Bowdoin College days, asked Hawthorne to write a campaign biography. Hawthorne complied. Pierce won the election in November, 1852, opening up the possibility of political appointment for Hawthorne. The Senate confirmed Pierce’s appointment of Hawthorne to the American consulship at Liverpool on March 26, 1853. This post was particularly attractive because it offered the greatest financial remuneration of all the offices that Pierce might have bestowed—a benefit that Hawthorne acknowledged without embarrassment. Hawthorne’s campaign biography of Pierce and subsequent involvement in Pierce’s administration disturbed Emerson and others in Concord who objected to the slavery interests with which Pierce was allied. Hawthorne died in May of 1864. Although repelled by Hawthorne’s personal and political loyalty to Franklin Pierce, Emerson served as a pallbearer at his funeral on May 23rd. In the journal entry for the following day, he revealed sorrow over never having gotten close enough to Hawthorne truly to appreciate him: “I have found in his death a surprise and a disappointment. I thought him a greater man than any of his works betray, that there was still a great deal of work in him, and that he might one day show a purer power … It would have been a happiness, doubtless to both of us, to have come into habits of unreserved intercourse. It was easy to talk with him … only, he said so little, that I talked too much … Now it appears that I waited too long. Lately, he had removed himself the more by the indignation his perverse politics and unfortunate friendship for that paltry Franklin Pierce awaked,—though it rather moved pity for Hawthorne, and the assured belief that he would outlive it, and come out right at last.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mayall Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1860 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Concord Emerson Hawthorne