Emerson Marries Lydia Jackson

On September 14, 1835, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Lydia Jackson were married in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Emerson’s first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, had passed away of tuberculosis in 1831. In January of 1835, Emerson—then living in Concord at the Old Manse—proposed to Lydia via letter, beseeching her to love him. She wrote a response but then asked him to come to Plymouth so she could read it to him in person. After their discussion—in which she shared concerns about her worthiness and the enormous changes their marriage would bring—she accepted. 

Lydia wrote and read poetry and was in one mind with Emerson’s thoughts. Emerson wrote: “I am persuaded that I address one so in love with what I love…that an affection founded on such a basis cannot alter.” They were married for 47 years—until his death—and had four children together. 

Fearing that New Englanders might refer to her as “Lydiar Emerson” based on pronunciations of the day, Emerson began calling his new wife Lidian, which remained her name for the rest of her life.

Emerson and Lidian were wed in the parlor of the Winslow House, the Jackson family home in Plymouth. Lidian preferred that they settle in Plymouth but Emerson disagreed: “Wherever I go therefore I guard & study my rambling propensities with a care that is ridiculous to people, but to me is the care of my high calling. Now Concord is only one of a hundred towns in which I could find these necessary objects but Plymouth I fear is not one. Plymouth is streets; I live in the wide champaign.” 

They moved into the home he’d purchased on the Cambridge Turnpike in Concord on September 15, 1835 and lived there for the rest of their lives. It quickly became the center of literary and Transcendental thinking, discussions and writing. 

— B. Ewen, Emerson House guide

Ralph Waldo Emerson & Lydia Jackson were wed in front of this fireplace in the parlor of the Edward Winslow House in Plymouth, MA (now known as the Mayflower House Museum).