Although an author’s biography is always to some degree relevant to the study of his or her writings, a remarkable unity existed between Henry David Thoreau’s life and his work. Thoreau’s deliberately lived life and his writings were dual expressions of the same underlying principles and aspirations.
One of the major authors of American Transcendentalism, lecturer, naturalist, student of Native American artifacts and life, land surveyor, pencil-maker, active opponent of slavery, social critic, and almost life-long resident of Concord, Massachusetts, Thoreau was born David Henry Thoreau on July 12, 1817, in his grandmother’s house on Virginia Road in Concord, which is close to Boston and Cambridge. In 1635 it was the first inland settlement in Massachusetts. The scene of the first armed resistance of the American Revolution on April 19, 1775, Concord was, in 1817, a vigorous place, home to the courts of Middlesex County, a beehive of artisan activity, trade, and politics as well as a farming community. Thoreau was baptized in the First Parish—the church in which as an adult he would decline membership—on October 12, 1817.
His father, John Thoreau (1787–1859), storekeeper and pencil-maker, was of French Protestant descent. Jean (John) Thoreau (1754–1801), Henry’s grandfather, born on the Isle of Jersey, came to America in 1773 and became a successful merchant in Boston. He married Jane Burns in 1781. In 1799, he bought part of what is now the Colonial Inn building in Concord and moved his large family there in 1800.
Henry’s mother, Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau (1787–1872), was born in Keene, New Hampshire. On her mother’s side, she descended from the Loyalist Jones family of Weston, Massachusetts. Her mother, Mary Jones, married the Reverend Asa Dunbar in 1772, was widowed, and married Captain Jonas Minott—who owned the farm where Thoreau was later born—in 1798.
Cynthia Dunbar and John Thoreau were married on May 11, 1812. They had four children: Helen (1812–1849); John (1815–1842); Henry (1817–1862); and Sophia (1819–1876). John Thoreau suffered business difficulties and found it necessary to move his young family several times, from Concord to Chelmsford, Massachusetts (in 1818), from Chelmsford back to Concord briefly (in 1821), then to Boston (in 1821), and finally back to Concord permanently (in 1823). After returning to Concord, John Thoreau rented a succession of houses before he could afford to build a home of his own (on Texas Street, now Belknap Street) in 1844. In 1849, John Thoreau bought and renovated a larger home on Main Street (the “Yellow House”), into which the family moved in 1850 and where Henry died in 1862.
Despite their early financial hardships, the Thoreau family shared a vital and sustaining home life that meant much to all of them—Henry included—as long as they lived. John and Cynthia Thoreau differed significantly from one another in temperament. John was quiet, obliging, patient, fond of reading and music (he played the flute, and passed along this love to Henry), observant, and a storehouse of information about those who populated the community around him. Cynthia, an intelligent woman, was far more outgoing, voluble, unafraid to speak her mind even at the risk of offending. Widely acknowledged as a good homemaker, she was generous in inviting those in need into her home for meals. She played an active part in the Concord Female Charitable Society (a volunteer social service organization) and participated in the abolition movement through membership in the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Concord and involvement in the Underground Railroad. She took in boarders to supplement the family income. The Thoreau children were influenced not only by their parents but also by members of the extended family. Mrs. Thoreau’s brother Charles Dunbar, along with Mrs. Thoreau, helped instill in the children a love of outdoor expeditions and an appreciation of the fact that they did not have to go far from home to enjoy nature. The children’s aunts Louisa Dunbar and Maria, Jane, Sarah, and Elizabeth Thoreau also influenced the children (Sarah and Elizabeth lived and ran a boarding house in the Concord home that their father had bought in 1799).
Thoreau was educated in Concord at Miss Phoebe Wheeler’s school, in the public school on what is now Monument Square, and under the tutelage of Phineas Allen at the Concord Academy. His schoolmates at the Academy, which he attended from 1828 until 1833, included Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, who went on to become Attorney General of the United States in the cabinet of President Ulysses S. Grant; Rockwood’s brother George Frisbie Hoar, later a United States senator; John Shepard Keyes, lawyer, United States marshal, judge, and Massachusetts senator; and William Whiting, Solicitor General for the War Department during the Civil War. Classmate Charles Stearns Wheeler was a special friend of Thoreau and later his college roommate. Thoreau was a member of the Concord Academic Debating Society while in school. In general, however, he preferred wandering in the open air to indoor activities.
In 1833, Thoreau entered Harvard College. Far from well-off, the Thoreaus made a concerted effort to raise money for the tuition. Henry’s sister Helen and brother John contributed some of what they earned as teachers, and his aunts contributed as well. Thoreau held a scholarship that also helped. In 1835, he took a temporary leave from his classes to teach school in Canton, Massachusetts, under the supervision of Orestes Brownson, with whom he studied German during his absence from Harvard. Thoreau performed creditably at Harvard, although he was not ranked near the top of his class. He read avidly in his spare time. His professors included Edward Tyrrell Channing, under whom he applied the basics of English composition in writing essays; Cornelius Felton, who taught Greek; and Francis Bowen, who taught philosophy. In addition to English, Greek, and philosophy, Thoreau studied Latin, mathematics, history, astronomy, theology, Italian, French, German, and Spanish. He was a member of the Institute of 1770, a Harvard lecture, debate and literary society.
Thoreau graduated from Harvard in 1837 and returned to Concord. Without explanation, he reversed the order of his first and middle names, signing himself “Henry David” instead of “David Henry” for the rest of his life. He taught public school for a short time (two weeks) in 1837. His disinclination to use physical punishment did not sit well with the Concord School Committee. Disgusted, Thoreau arbitrarily applied the rod to six students and promptly resigned. Unable to find another teaching job, he devoted himself to his father’s pencil-making business.
In October of 1837, Thoreau began to keep a journal in which he made regular entries, recording his daily experiences, thoughts, observations of nature and of life, and reactions to reading. His journals, which he kept until 1861, became the source of much of his published writing. In a real sense, they form his magnum opus. Moreover, on April 11, 1838, Thoreau delivered his first lecture before the Concord Lyceum (the lecture “Society,” based on journal entries that he had made in March of 1838). The lecture platform provided Thoreau with another means of expressing his developing thoughts prior to their reworking for publication. In Thoreau’s writing, as in Emerson’s, there is frequently a close relationship between journal, lecture, and published word.
