“A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world.”
Putting Down Roots
As a descendant of one of Concord’s founders—the English minister Peter Bulkeley—Ralph Waldo Emerson had a connection to the town that ran deep. He grew up visiting his grandparents in “The Old Manse” and lived there himself for a time after losing his first wife. As he and Lidian considered where to begin their married life, Emerson made a strong case for settling “in the wide champaign” of the town he loved so well.
Emerson purchased his Concord home in July 1835, proclaiming it to have “the only good cellar that had been built in Concord.” Along with the house there was a sizable barn and two acres of land. Sharing the news in a letter to his brother William, Emerson wrote:
Has Charles told you that I have dodged the doom of building & have bought the Coolidge house in Concord with the expectation of entering it next September. It is a mean place & cannot be fine until trees & flowers give it a character of its own. But we shall crowd so many books & papers & if possible, wise friends, into it that it shall have as much wit as it can carry.
Waldo E
On September 15th of that year, the day after their wedding, Emerson and Lidian moved into the new house along with Emerson’s widowed mother Ruth. The couple would spend the next 47 years there together, raising four children and transforming the property into their “sylvan home.”
In the early years the Emersons referred to their home as “Coolidge Castle,” a reference to the Coolidges of Boston who had it built in 1828 as a summer house. The house later became known to the family as “Bush” and it remained Emerson's home — and workplace — for the rest of his life.
Bush became not only a place for Emerson's study and writing, but a literary and intellectual center for the emerging American Transcendentalist movement. Visitors from afar stayed with the Emersons often, sometimes for weeks, and guests, friends and kin from Concord and Boston came regularly to share meals and conversation around the dining room table; to enjoy tea and games in the welcoming parlor; or to talk with Emerson in his study.
When I bought my house, the first thing I did was plant trees.
In November 1836, after the birth of his son Waldo, Emerson planted six hemlocks in the yard. In 1837 he planted 31 more trees, including nine chestnuts fronting the house. While the last of his chestnut trees came down in a windstorm in 2012, two new ones were planted from the castings and continue to thrive today.
In 1838 Emerson wrote to Thomas Carlyle, "I set out on the west side of my house forty young pine trees." Soon his two acres grew to nine and by 1847 Emerson had enough land to plant an orchard of 128 fruit trees.
Early on the morning of July 24, 1872, a fire started in the attic of the Emersons' home and spread quickly. Neighbors rushed over to help, rescuing most of the family’s possessions and managing to save the house, although it was badly damaged. Emerson’s journal entry that day had only two words:
House burned.
After the fire, friends raised funds to reconstruct the house and to send Emerson and his daughter Ellen abroad while the repairs took place. Lidian moved in with their daughter Edith and the two of them refurnished Bush ahead of Emerson and Ellen’s return in May 1873.
Ralph Waldo Emerson died at home on April 27, 1882 at the age of 78. Lidian lived for ten more years, rejoining him in 1892 at the age of 90. The last Emerson to reside in the house was Ellen, who died in 1909. It has been owned and managed as a museum by the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association (RWEMA) since Edward Emerson’s death in 1930.
Friends Who Came to Visit
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Abigail May Alcott
The wife of Bronson and mother of Louisa May, she was an ardent abolitionist and was active in Concord’s Female Anti-Slavery Society. Emerson’s wife Lidian also actively influenced his thinking on abolition.
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Amos Bronson Alcott
Educator, Transcendentalist, writer and the father of Louisa May Alcott, he was a close associate of Emerson.
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Louisa May Alcott
Author of the American classic Little Women, she greatly admired Emerson, who let her use his library and encouraged her aspirations as a writer.
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John Brown
An abolitionist who believed that insurrection and violence were the only way to end slavery. He became a hero to many abolitionists including Emerson and Thoreau. Concord resident Franklin Sanborn was one of Brown's chosen “secret six.”
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James Elliot Cabot
A lawyer and indispensable literary assistant to Emerson in his later years, he helped organize Emerson’s papers, and, at the request of the family, wrote the first "official" memoir of Emerson.
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William Ellery Channing
Poet, writer, editor, Transcendentalist and a powerful influence on Henry David Thoreau, encouraging him to “build yourself a hut, and there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive.”
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Daniel Chester French
An eminent sculptor whose works include the Lincoln Memorial. Emerson was responsible for French securing his first commission: the Minute Man statue at the Old North Bridge in Concord, commemorating the local militias who fought the British at the start of the American Revolution. French sculpted several likenesses of Emerson, who sat for him in person.
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Margaret Fuller
Journalist, writer, Transcendentalist, and women’s rights advocate.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
Writer of literary classics including The Scarlet Letter, House of Seven Gables and Blithedale Romance. While not a Transcendentalist, he was an admirer of Emerson, a neighbor and a frequent companion in walks and conversation.
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Elizabeth Sherman Hoar
The fiancée of Emerson’s brother Charles (who succumbed to tuberculosis before the wedding), “Aunt Lizzie” was part of the Transcendental Circle and was an important figure in the Emerson family. Emerson referred to her often as “his sister.”
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Judge Ebenezer R. Hoar
A Concordian who served as U.S. Attorney General under President Ulysses S. Grant. He was the father of Lizzy Hoar, an abolitionist and a frequent guest at the Emerson home.
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James Russell Lowell
Poet, abolitionist and one of the founders of The Atlantic Monthly, along with Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes.
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Horace Mann
A leading public education reformer, teacher and abolitionist, he was also the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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John Muir
One of the most famous and influential naturalists and conservationists, whom Emerson met in California in 1871. Muir did not get to Concord until June of 1893, 11 years after Emerson had died. When he visited he laid flowers on Emerson’s grave and dined with Edward Waldo Emerson. The Emerson/Muir meeting in California was momentous for Muir who wrote of Emerson, that he was "the most serene, majestic, sequoia-like soul I ever met.”
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Theodore Parker
A Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist, he was an active reformer and abolitionist who inspired many, including Emerson and Abraham Lincoln.
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Elizabeth Peabody
A teacher, publisher, abolitionist, member of the Transcendental Club and a founder of the American kindergarten. She published The Dial, and her West Street bookstore in Boston was a central venue for Transcendentalist talks. She also taught in Bronson Alcott’s Temple School and wrote Record of a School about Alcott’s unorthodox educational philosophy and methods.
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Caroline Sturgis Tappan
American poet, close friend of Margaret Fuller and a frequent visitor and correspondent of Emerson and Henry James.
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Henry David Thoreau
A writer, surveyor, Transcendentalist and close friend of Emerson. He was a member of the Transcendental Club and contributed to The Dial regularly. Thoreau lived with the Emersons at different times, and built his cabin on Emerson’s land at Walden Pond. He stayed at Walden for two years, two months and two days. His book Walden, his account of the experience, is an American classic.
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Walt Whitman
An American poet and essayist. Emerson first came in contact with Walt Whitman when Whitman heard him deliver a lecture in New York City, “Nature and the Powers of the Poet”. Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass and sent a copy to Emerson, anonymously. Emerson sent that now famous letter to Whitman, “The most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed”... Also in the letter the often quoted line “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” Whitman called Emerson “Master”.
