Lidian was Emerson’s second wife and the mother of his four children. His first wife Ellen Louisa Tucker died of consumption (tuberculosis) in 1831, after less than two years of marriage. On January 24, 1835 Emerson wrote a letter proposing marriage to Lydia Jackson:  

I am rejoiced in my Reason as well as in my Understanding by finding an earnest and noble mind whose presence quickens in mine all that is good and shames and repels me from my own weaknesses.  Can I resist the impulse to beseech you to love me? …I am persuaded that I address one so in love with what I love…that an affection founded on such a basis cannot alter…Say to me therefore anything but no.

Lydia married Emerson on September 14, 1835 at her home in Plymouth, MA. Lidian, as her husband called her, was educated, intelligent and active in social causes such as abolition. She was a member of Concord’s Female Anti-Slavery Society and supported women’s suffrage.  Also, she cared deeply for animals and was sensitive to their humane treatment.