Saving Concord's Darwinian & Abolitionist landmark, where Thoreau met John Brown
Wednesday, January 29, 2025 12:14 PM
Save the house where Thoreau conspired with John Brown
and was among the first Americans
to read Darwin’s "Origin of the Species"
Originally posted on May 29, 2020
To the Concord Historical Commission, Concord Selectmen, and Concord Journal,
This is a warning that the interior of a landmark of national importance is in danger of being severely damaged. The history of the 250-year-old home near the Thoreau residence is mind-boggling. First of all, the Samuel Jones House was standing when the American Revolution broke out in Concord. But more importantly, it was the linchpin of the network of four homes (along with the Alcotts’, Emersons’ and Thoreaus’), which served as headquarters for the Abolitionist and Transcendentalist movements.
It is also the house where one of the earliest and most eloquent advocates for women’s rights, and one of the greatest editors of the 19th century, Margaret Fuller, edited the main Transcendentalist forum, The Dial, and gave Thoreau the inspiration and tough love that helped him shape Walden. Thoreau's book probably would not have become the masterpiece it is, if she hadn’t bowled Henry over with her own book about life on water (Summer on the Lakes in 1843) and given him hard editorial advice while rejecting two of his early essays.
The reason Margaret stayed in the house whenever she was in Concord was that it belonged to her sister, Ellen, and Ellen's husband, William Ellery Channing, who was one of the country’s most famous poets and Thoreau’s frequent walking and rowing companion.* Channing and Thoreau were so close, in fact, that Henry kept his boat in the house’s original back yard.
Although the great transcendentalists were frequent visitors in the house long before the Channings left it, the building’s history just grew richer after they rented it to an ardent abolitionist named Franklin Sanborn in 1855, since it continued to attract the likes of Emerson and Hawthorne, while also providing a sanctuary for John Brown in 1856 and 1859, when Brown met with a small group of conspirators (including Thoreau) to arrange financing for the Harper’s Ferry raid. That fact never fails to astonish me: here we are at the very spot where one of the most revolutionary acts in American history was plotted.
But the amazing thing is that the house was the scene of an equally important meeting of a very different nature (although it involved some of the same people). The second meeting, which reveals just how open-minded and inspired the thinkers who gathered here were, occurred when Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Charles Loring Brace, and Sanborn spent New Year’s Day 1860 reading an advance copy of On the Origin of Species (that Darwin had sent) aloud and discussing it late into the night, making the house one of the first places (if not the first one) where Darwinian theory and the depths of time required to make it possible were discussed in the Western Hemisphere. In short, the discussions that took place on this property made it the closest thing that 19th century America had to a forum in ancient Athens in terms of intellectual firepower and purpose.
The house is also fascinating for another reason – its long association with outraged women who formed the bedrock of abolitionism. The women of Concord planned the movement’s campaigns, organized its gatherings, and harbored fugitives, making abolitionism an early expression of feminine indignation and commitment, and a precursor to modern feminism.
The story hardly ends there, though, since the barn, which still has its horse stall, was used as a studio by Daniel Chester French, who went on to sculpt the statue of Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial. In short, this complex was the political, moral, and cultural nexus of our country at a time when it had lost its bearings. What’s so amazing is that the family has done everything to keep it in its antebellum condition, making it an architectural marvel. It feels as if Thoreau, Emerson, Fuller, Brown and Hawthorne could be gathered in adjacent rooms.
It is my understanding that Concord only protects the outsides of buildings in its historic district and that it allows insides to be modified beyond recognition as was done in the Thoreau house in the 1980s. This policy is like protecting the hillside containing Lascaux, but not the cave and its paintings, so it is imperative that the town expand its purview to important historic interiors immediately.
My friend Geraldine Brooks, who wrote the novel March (2005) and whose late husband, Tony Horwitz, wrote Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War (2011) - two of the many books and articles** which touch upon events on the property - was shocked when I told her the home was threatened, and sent the following words to reinforce this appeal:
"This house is an almost pristine example of an early 19th century interior, the preservation of which is in itself of immense value. But this rare survivor also bears witness to some of the most significant intellectual history of our nation, and certainly to the proud history of Concord. Its preservation helps us to answer the essential question of who we were, through which we reach a better understanding of who we are, and who we might yet become. As such it should be protected by a preservation easement that covers the interior of the building as well as the exterior. This interior, which has survived miraculously for so long, should not be gutted for some contemporary whim. I once worked with the National Trust for Historic Preservation to obtain such an easement on a historic property in which I resided, though I hasten to add it was nowhere near as historically significant as this property. (I would add that the easement was no barrier to necessary renovation, but merely enabled me to benefit from the expertise of the Trust's historic preservation architects in determining what would be most appropriate.) When I was researching my novel, March, which was honored by the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Alcott and Emerson house museums were invaluable. As I wrote in that book’s Afterword: ‘The memory of (Concord’s) illustrious former resistants is well served by the proud sense of historic stewardship that pervades the town.’ I do hope that this stewardship will once again proudly assert itself to save this beautiful, remarkable and significant house."
I hope you will do all you can to protect one of Concord's most significant landmarks by ensuring that the building’s interior is largely preserved.
My best regards,
Duncan Caldwell
Lecturer, Doctoral module, Muséum National d´Histoire Naturelle (Paris)
Fellow, Marine and Paleobiological Research Institute (Vineyard Haven)
Guest curator, Mariposa Museum (Oak Bluffs, MA, & Peterborough, NH)
*Channing also went on to become Thoreau’s first biographer.
** Including my own article, “Mind Prints, Arrowheads, the Indians and Thoreau” (Caldwell, Duncan. 2018).
Click here to see a lecture with the same title that I gave for the Mariposa Museum.