Ralph Waldo Emerson—essayist, poet, lecturer, philosopher, Unitarian minister, and central figure among the American Transcendentalists—was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 25, 1803. He was the fourth of eight children born to the Reverend William Emerson (1769–1811), pastor of the First Church in Boston, and Ruth Haskins Emerson (1768–1853). Emerson’s roots in both Concord and in the ministry were deep. On his father’s side, his ancestry extended back to early colonial Massachusetts, to the Reverend Peter Bulkeley (1583–1659), a Puritan who had come from England and, in 1635, became a founder and the first minister of Concord. Bulkeley’s granddaughter had married the Reverend Joseph Emerson, son of Thomas, a settler in coastal Ipswich, Massachusetts. Joseph’s grandson Joseph, also a minister, was the father of William Emerson, Ralph Waldo’s grandfather. William Emerson (1743–1776), minister of the First Parish in Concord, had gone to Fort Ticonderoga in New York to serve as chaplain of the Revolutionary army, became ill, and died before he could return to Concord. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s maternal grandfather was successful Boston merchant John Haskins (1729–1814), a cooper and distiller.
William Emerson and Ruth Haskins were married on October 25, 1796. Their eight children were: Phebe Ripley (1798–1800); John Clarke (1799–1807); William (1801–1868); Ralph Waldo (1803–1882); Edward Bliss (1805–1834); Robert Bulkeley (1807–1859); Charles Chauncy (1808–1836); and Mary Caroline (1811–1814). William and Ruth Emerson paid careful attention to both the religious and the intellectual development of their children, and provided a stable early home life for them. William, a liberal minister with a taste for literary activity, encouraged scholarship as well as religious devotion in his sons. He was a sociable man, well-respected in the community. His public position brought frequent visitors to the Emerson home. Ruth Haskins was a pious woman who met the various demands placed upon her as the wife of a prominent man and as a mother. The Emersons lost their first child, Phebe Ripley, in 1800. Their second child, John Clarke, died in 1807 from tuberculosis—a constant, looming threat in the nineteenth century, and one that repeatedly touched Ralph Waldo Emerson’s life. From childhood, Emerson was close to his brothers William, Edward Bliss, and Charles Chauncy. Robert Bulkeley (called Bulkeley) was mentally retarded. His condition and care concerned his brothers until his death, in 1859.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s world was radically altered in 1811, when his father died, leaving Mrs. Emerson to support and raise the young family on her own. Although she managed to care for and to educate her sons, financial insecurity quickly became a fact of life. The First Church granted her a stipend for a time, as well as the use of the parish house. Mary Moody Emerson (1774–1863), William Emerson’s unmarried sister, stayed with the family for several months after her brother’s death, and returned again later. A woman of strong religious devotion and intellect, conservative in some ways and liberal in others, opinionated, unafraid to express herself either face-to-face or in her letters, she was a powerful influence on Emerson and his brothers. Her correspondence with him in the 1820s helped to inform his Transcendentalism.
The Emerson brothers stayed in Concord from time to time during their childhood. The Reverend Ezra Ripley, who had married Phebe Bliss Emerson, the widow of Revolutionary minister William Emerson, was their step-grandfather. When in Concord, Ralph Waldo stayed at the Old Manse, Ripley’s home, and formerly the home of their grandfather William Emerson. From November 1814 until the following spring, the entire Emerson family lived at the Manse. (Their temporary relocation was prompted by fear of a possible British attack on Boston during the War of 1812, and by high prices in the city.) Ezra Ripley shared his extensive knowledge of Concord history with the Emerson boys, and gave them a sense of their ancestors’ importance in the town. In Concord, they had the opportunity to experience both small-town life and the pleasures of nature. Having returned to Boston in 1815, Mrs. Emerson took in boarders to keep her household financially afloat. The family moved frequently, but Ruth Emerson, encouraged by her sister-in-law Mary Moody Emerson, steadfastly applied herself to providing her sons with an education that reflected the standards, the values, and the aspirations of her late husband.
Emerson’s education began in Boston, at dame school (a school for small children, in which the basics were taught by a woman in her own home). He then attended grammar school. In 1812, he entered the Boston Public Latin School, where his studies included Latin and Greek. He simultaneously attended a separate writing school. After the family’s 1814–1815 stay in Concord, Emerson read extensively on his own in the spring of 1815 and returned to Boston Latin in the fall. He was a serious, though unremarkable, student.
Ralph Waldo Emerson entered Harvard College in 1817 as president’s freshman, or orderly, a position that helped pay his way through college and that required him to serve as messenger for Harvard’s president, John Kirkland. He also tutored and later served as a waiter in the junior commons, and during college vacations taught in Waltham, Massachusetts, in the college preparatory school kept by the Reverend Samuel Ripley (son of Ezra Ripley) and his learned wife Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley.
Emerson’s Harvard curriculum included Latin, Greek, English, rhetoric, history, mathematics, and modern languages. Emerson read English philosopher John Locke as part of his formal studies. A middling student, he read widely on his own. Shakespeare, Montaigne, Swift, and Byron were among the authors he selected independently of his class work. His Harvard teachers included George Ticknor in modern languages, Edward Everett in Greek, and Edward Tyrrel Channing in English composition. (In 1815, Ticknor and Everett had traveled to Europe and studied at the University of Göttingen, where they were exposed to the German literature and thought that would become so important to the New England Transcendentalists.) Emerson was a member of Harvard’s Pythologian Club (a literary society). He won a prize for an essay on Socrates and graduated from Harvard in 1821.
