Henry D. Thoreau 3

Henry D. Thoreau 3

"Soon after Father's arrival in Boston, probably, he open'd

a store on Long Wharf, as documents addressed to 'John

Thoreau, merchant,' appear to signify, and one subsequently

purchased 'on King Street, afterward called State Street.'

And now I will remark in passing that Henry's father was

bred to the mercantile line, and continued in it till

failure in business; when he resorted to pencil-making,

and succeeded so well as to obtain the first medal at the

Salem Mechanics' Fair. I think Henry could hardly compete

with his father in pencil-making, any more than he, with

his peculiar genius and habits, would have been willing

to spend much time in such 'craft.' His father left no

will, but a competency, at least, to his family, and what

was done relative to the business after his death was

accomplished by his daughter Sophia. I mention this to

rectify Mr. Page's mistake relating to Henry.

 

"And now, as I have written all I can glean of

Father's family, I will turn to the maternal side,

of which it appears, in religious belief, they were

of the Quaker persuasion. But I was sorry to see, by

good old great-great-grandfather Tillet's will, that

slavery was tolerated in those days in the good State

of Massachusetts, and handed down from generation to

generation. My great-grandmother (Tillet) married David

Orrok; her daughter, Sarah Orrok, married Mr. Burns, a

Scotch gentleman. At what time he came to this country, or

married, I cannot ascertain, but have often been told, to

gain the consent to it of grandmother's Quaker parents, he

was obliged to doff his rich apparel of gems and ruffles,

and conform to the more simple garb of his Quaker bride.

On a visit to his home in Scotland he died, in what year

is not mentioned. Before my father's decease, a letter

was received from the executor of grandfather's estate,

dated Stirling, informing him there was property left to

Jane Burns, his daughter in America, 'well worth coming

after.' But Father was too much out of health to attend

to the getting it; and the letter, subsequently put into a

lawyer's hands by Brother, then the only heir, was lost.

 

"It has been said I inherit more of the traits of my

foreign ancestry than any of my family,--which pleases me.

Probably the vivacity of the French and the superstition

of the Scotch may somewhat characterize me,--which it is

to be hop'd the experience of an octogenarian may suitably

modify. But this is nothing, here nor there. And now that

I have written all that is necessary, and perhaps more,

I will close, with kind wishes for health and happiness.

Yours respectfully,

 

"MARIA THOREAU."

 

It would be hard to compress more family history into a short letter,

and yet leave it so sprightly in style as this. Of the four children

of Maria Thoreau's brother John and Cynthia Dunbar,--John, Helen,

Henry, and Sophia,--the two eldest, John and Helen, were said to be

"clear Thoreau," and the others, Henry and Sophia, "clear Dunbar;"

though in fact the Thoreau traits were marked in Henry also. Let us

see, then, who and what were the family of Henry Thoreau's mother,

Cynthia Dunbar, who was born in Keene, N. H., in 1787. She was the

daughter of Rev. Asa Dunbar, who was born at Bridgewater, Mass., in

1745; graduated at Harvard College in 1767 (a classmate of Sir Thomas

Bernard and Increase Sumner); preached for a while at Bedford, near

Concord, in 1769, when he was "a young candidate, newly begun to

preach;" settled in Salem in 1772; resigned his pastorate in 1779; and

removed to Keene just at the close of the Revolution, where he became

a lawyer, and died, a little upwards of forty-two, in 1787. He married

before 1775, Miss Mary Jones, the daughter of Col. Elisha Jones, of

Weston, a man of wealth and influence in his town, who died in 1776.

Mrs. Mary (Jones) Dunbar long outlived the husband of her youth; in

middle life she married a Concord farmer, Jonas Minott, whom she also

outlived; and it was in his house that her famous grandson was born in

July, 1817. Mrs. Minott was left a widow for the second time in 1813,

when she was sixty-five years old, and in 1815 she sent a petition to

the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts, which was drawn up and

indorsed by her pastor, Dr. Ripley, of Concord, and which contains a

short sketch of Henry Thoreau's maternal grandfather, from whom he

is said to have inherited many qualities. Mrs. Minott's petition sets

forth "that her first husband, Asa Dunbar, Esq., late of Keene, N.

H., was a native of Massachusetts; that he was for a number of years

settled in the gospel ministry at Salem; that afterwards he was a

counselor-at-law; that he was Master of a Lodge of Free and Accepted

Masons at Keene, where he died; that in the cause of Masonry he was

interested and active; that through some defection or misfortune of

that Lodge _she_ has suffered loss, both on account of what was due

to him and to her, at whose house they held their meetings; that in

the settlement of the estate of her late husband, Jonas Minott, Esq.,

late of Concord, she has been peculiarly unfortunate, and become very

much straitened in the means of living comfortably; that being thus

reduced, and feeling the weight of cares, of years, and of widowhood

to be very heavy, after having seen better days, she is induced, by

the advice of friends, as well as her own exigencies, to apply for aid

to the benevolence and charity of the Masonic fraternity." At the

house of this decayed gentlewoman, about two years after the date of

this petition, Henry Thoreau was born. She lived to see him running

about, a sprightly boy, and he remembered her with affection. One of

his earliest recollections of Concord was of driving in a chaise with

his grandmother along the shore of Walden Pond, perhaps on the way to

visit her relatives in Weston, and thinking, as he said afterward,

that he should like to live there.

 

Ellery Channing, whose life of his friend Henry is a mine of curious

information on a thousand topics, relevant and irrelevant, and who

often traversed the "old Virginia road" with Thoreau before the house

in which he was born was removed from its green knoll to a spot

further east, where it now stands, thus pictures the brown farm-house

and its surroundings: "It was a perfect piece of our old New England

style of building, with its gray, unpainted boards, its grassy,

unfenced door-yard. The house is somewhat isolate and remote from

thoroughfares; on the Virginia road, an old-fashioned, winding, at

length deserted pathway, the more smiling for its forked orchards,

tumbling walls, and mossy banks. About it are pleasant sunny meadows,

deep with their beds of peat, so cheering with its homely, hearth-like

fragrance; and in front runs a constant stream through the centre

of that great tract sometimes called 'Bedford levels,'--the brook a

source of the Shawsheen River." (This is a branch of the Merrimac,

as Concord River is, but flows into the main stream through Andover,

and not through Billerica and Lowell, as the Concord does.) The road

on which it stands, a mile and a half east of the Fitchburg railroad

station, and perhaps a mile from Thoreau's grave in the village

cemetery, is a by-path from Concord to Lexington, through the little

town of Bedford. The farm-house, with its fields and orchard, was

a part of Mrs. Minott's "widow's thirds," on which she was living

at the date of her grandson's birth (July 12, 1817), and which her

son-in-law, John Thoreau, was "carrying on" for her that year.

 

Mrs. Minott, a few years before Dr. Ripley's petition in her behalf,

came near having a more distinguished son-in-law, Daniel Webster,

who, like the young Dunbars, was New Hampshire born, and a year or

two older than Mrs. Minott's daughter, Louisa Dunbar. He had passed

through Dartmouth College a little in love with two or three of the

young ladies of Hanover, and had returned to his native town of

Salisbury, N. H., when he met in Boscawen, near by, Miss Louisa, who,

like Miss Grace Fletcher, whom he married a few years afterward, was

teaching school in one of the New Hampshire towns. Miss Dunbar made

an impression on Webster's heart, always susceptible, and, had the

fates been propitious, he might have called Henry Thoreau nephew in

after years; but the silken tie was broken before it was fairly knit.

I suspect that she was the person referred to by one of Webster's

biographers, who says, speaking of an incident that occurred in

January, 1805: "Mr. Webster, at that time, had no thought of marrying;

he had not even met the lady who afterward became his wife. He had

been somewhat interested in another lady, who is occasionally referred

to in his letters, written after he left college, but who was not

either of those whom he had known at Hanover. But this affair never

proceeded very far, and he had entirely dismissed it from his mind

before he went to Boston in 1804." In January, 1806, about the time

of his father's death, Webster wrote to a college friend, "I am not

married, and seriously am inclined to think I never shall be," though

he was then a humble suitor to Grace Fletcher.

 

Louisa Dunbar was a lively, dark-haired, large-eyed, pleasing young

lady, who had perhaps been educated in part at Boscawen, where

Webster studied for college, and afterwards was a school-teacher

there. She received from him those attentions which young men give

to young ladies without any very active thoughts of marriage; but

he at one time paid special attentions to her, which might have led

to matrimony, perhaps, if Webster had not soon after fallen under

the sway of a more fascinating school-teacher, Miss Grace Fletcher,

of Hopkinton, N. H., whom he first saw at the door of her little

school-house in Salisbury, not far from his own birthplace. A Concord

matron, a neighbor and friend of the Dunbars and Thoreaus, heard

the romantic story from Webster's own lips forty years afterward,

as she was driving with him through the valley of the Assabet: how

he was traveling along a New Hampshire road in 1805, stopped at a

school-house to ask a question or leave a message, and was met at the

door by that vision of beauty and sweetness, Grace Fletcher herself,

to whom he yielded his heart at once. From a letter of Webster's to

this Concord friend (Mrs. Louisa Cheney) I quote this description of

his native region, which has never been printed:--

 

"FRANKLIN, N. H., _September 29, '45_.

 

"DEAR MRS. CHENEY,--You are hardly expecting to hear from

me in this remote region of the earth. Where I am was

originally a part of Salisbury, the place of my birth; and,

having continued to own my father's farm, I sometimes make

a visit to this region. The house is on the west bank of

Merrimac River, fifteen miles above Concord (N. H.), in a

pleasant valley, made rather large by a turn in the stream,

and surrounded by high and wooded hills. I came here five

or six days ago, alone, to try the effect of the mountain

air upon my health.

 

"This is a very picturesque country. The hills are high,

numerous, and irregular,--some with wooded summits, and

some with rocky heads as white as snow. I went into a

pasture of mine last week, lying high up on one of the

hills, and had there a clear view of the White Mountains

in the northeast, and of Ascutney, in Vermont, back of

Windsor, in the west; while within these extreme points was

a visible scene of mountains and dales, lakes and streams,

farms and forests. I really think this region is the true

Switzerland of the United States.

 

"I am attracted to this particular spot by very strong

feelings. It is the scene of my early years; and it is

thought, and I believe truly, that these scenes come back

upon us with renewed interest and more strength of feeling

as we find years running over us. White stones, visible

from the window, and close by, mark the grave of my father,

my mother, one brother, and three sisters. Here are the

same fields, the same hills, the same beautiful river, as

in the days of my childhood. The human beings which knew

them now know them no more. Few are left with whom I shared

either toil or amusement in the days of youth. But this is

melancholy and personal, and enough of it. One mind cannot

enter fully into the feelings of another in regard to the

past, whether those feelings be joyous or melancholy, or,

which is more commonly the case, partly both. I am, dear Mrs. Cheney, yours truly,