In the summer of 1842, Concord was like any other New England town. Sitting 18 miles west of Boston, the town of 2,000 souls was still very rural. The railroad wouldn’t come through for another two years, and there was no telegraph yet; only the daily stagecoach and the post office connected Concord to the rest of the world.  

While most Concordians were farmers, the center of town was a bustling place with shops, a coffee house, taverns, and a blacksmith and livery, all doing lively business. Concord was a shire town in 1842, and the Middlesex County Courthouse and the county jail were both in the center of town. Next to the jail was the imposing Middlesex Hotel, which provided lodging, food, and drink for teamsters coming through town, as well as for lawyers and litigants who were in Concord on court days.

Concord in the 1840s. 

| Lithograph by J.W. Barber & J. Downes

However, one man stood out amongst the farmers, tradesmen, and shopkeepers of Concord. His name was Ralph Waldo Emerson and in 1842 he was already famous.

Having moved to Concord in 1834, the ex-Unitarian minister had quickly made a name for himself with a series of essays and lectures on man, God, nature, and their connection to the universe. While the younger generation read and admired Emerson’s works, others, particularly the Unitarian hierarchy in Boston and the faculty at Harvard College (Emerson’s alma mater), were not so impressed with what was now being called “Transcendentalism.” One minister called Emerson’s views “the latest form of infidelity.” 

Emerson’s house

| ©Richard Smith

After publishing “Nature” in 1836 and his “Essays” in 1841, Emerson was assumed by many to be the leader of the Transcendentalists. But these freethinkers weren’t organized enough to be a movement, and Emerson certainly didn’t consider himself their leader. Still, they would meet every so often at Emerson’s house and Concord soon became the epicenter for poets, writers, and philosophers of all stripes and talents.  

One of the young men who was now a part of Emerson’s orbit was a native Concordian. In fact, of all the Transcendentalists, he was the only one actually born in Concord, and his name was Henry Thoreau.  

In the summer of 1842, Thoreau was 25 years old, five years out of Harvard College, and not doing much of anything. The school that he and his brother John operated had closed with John’s death from lockjaw in January. And now, he was living at Emerson’s house, acting as a general handyman, and learning how to be a writer. 

Emerson was always discovering young men and women whom he thought showed talent as writers and poets. Of all his protégés, Thoreau was the one who seemed to hold the most promise. The young man’s wit, humor, and encyclopedic knowledge of nature greatly impressed Emerson. The two men soon became close friends; in his journal, Emerson often gushed over the “valiant,” “noble,” and “good” Henry Thoreau.

Waldo did his best to encourage Thoreau to write. It was at Emerson’s suggestion that Thoreau kept a journal; Emerson was certainly the reason that some of Thoreau’s poetry and early essays appeared in various periodicals. But, in 1842, Henry Thoreau was still a young writer trying to find his literary voice.  

Another budding writer in Concord was 38-year-old Nathaniel Hawthorne. Born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts, Hawthorne and his new bride, Sophia, were now living in The Old Manse (Emerson’s ancestral home). Married in Boston on July 9 and coming straight to Concord, they were madly in love, calling the Manse “our Eden” and “Paradise.” “We are as happy as people can be, without making themselves ridiculous,” Hawthorne would write.  

Hawthorne was a writer of short stories with little success. He had one book to his name, an 1837 collection of previously published works called Twice Told Tales. Over the next couple of years he would put together 25 short stories that would be published as Mosses From an Old Manse in 1846. But in the summer of 1842, he was happy to be newly wed and spend as much time as possible with his “Ownest.” The two books that would make him a literary star, The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, were still several years down the road. 

Alcott’s house 

| ©Richard Smith

Another family in Concord that summer was the Alcotts, and Concord considered them the strangest of all. They were renting a house on the outskirts of Main Street, a small cottage called Dovecote. Bronson Alcott was an educator and philosopher by trade, and he was getting no work doing either. He was the most Transcendental of Emerson’s circle; intelligent, idealistic, and reform minded, he wanted to change the world. Emerson had great faith in Alcott, calling him “a half-god” and a “noble genius,” and he often helped the Alcotts with financial assistance by hiring Bronson to do odd jobs. 

Alcott’s wife, 41-year-old Abigail May Alcott, a die-hard abolitionist and reformer in her own right, truly believed in her husband’s idealism, but philosophizing did little to pay the bills or put food on the table. Poverty was a real concern for the Alcotts and they had four little women to raise: Anna (age 11), Louisa (age 9), Lizzie (age 7) and Abbie (age 2), born at the Dovecote in 1840 — the only Concord-born Alcott. The next summer, Bronson would start the ill-fated Transcendental commune called Fruitlands in Harvard, Massachusetts. 

Others would come and go to Concord, and all were drawn to Emerson. One was the moody and eccentric Ellery Channing (“Whim, thy name is Channing,” Alcott once wrote) who fancied himself a poet. He would, with Emerson’s help, publish his first volume of poetry in 1843. 

Another visitor to Concord was the brilliant Margaret Fuller, perhaps the most well-read of all the Transcendentalists and nearly as famous as Emerson. She’d already made a name for herself by holding “Conversations” for women in Boston, but was yet to publish her best remembered work, Woman in the 19th Century. She connected with Emerson on an intellectual level unlike anyone else, and the two became close friends. She was, Emerson would write, “my audience.” 

Both Ellery and Margaret would spend that summer at Emerson’s house. And, to add to the mix, Ellery would suddenly marry Margaret’s sister, Ellen, in September. The couple would move into a cottage not far from Emerson’s home and they would have a tumultuous 14-year marriage until Ellen’s death from tuberculosis in 1856. 

That was Concord in the summer of 1842.At first glance it was a sleepy New England town, but, upon closer inspection, it was a town filled with creative, innovative writers and thinkers. These men and women would create an intellectual revolution that would shape 19th-century American literature and thought. And in the summer of 1842, they were friends and neighbors, supporting each other, influencing one another, and basking in each others’ brilliance.