DEDICATION

This study is respectfully dedicated to Roland Wells Robbins, without whose help and constructive guidance the gathering of this material would have been impossible.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Grateful acknowledgement is hereby made to Henry Seidel Canby
for his book, *Canby's Thoreau*, Houghton Mifflin, 1939; F. B.
Sanborn for his book, *Recollections of 70 Years*, Vol II, Graham
Press, 1909; Roland W. Robbins for *Discovery at Walden*, George
R. Barnstead & Sons, 1947; and Joseph Wood Krutch for his book,
*Henry David Thoreau*, Sloane, 1948. Acknowledgement goes also to
Edwin Way Teale for use of several of his unpublished photographs.
Especially we wish to give thanks to Mr. Roland Welles Robbins
for permission to quote heretofore unpublished material and use
some of his original photographs, and also to both Mr. and Mrs.
Robbins for their kindness and hospitality toward us during our
visits to Concord in preparation of this essay. We wish also to
thank the members of the Concord Antiquarian Society for their
help and assistance, and also Mr. R. Collette for permission to
photograph his model of Thoreau's house.

INTRODUCTION

From material gathered during his two years residence on the shores of Walden Pond, Henry Thoreau wrote Walden, a book that is becoming recognized as one of the most substantial pieces of American literature. But the fact that he lived there from March 1845 until September 1847, which has not been doubted by even the most sceptical of our historians, did not enable Thoreauvians and historical researchers to easily find the exact site of the house Thoreau lived in. It was not until 100 years later (almost to the day) that the true site was found by Roland Welles Robbins of Lincoln, Mass. We read of this discovery with great interest and excitement. The whole process as Mr. Robbins describes it appealed strongly to our romantic nature, and so it was that we resolved to join in the hunt--what there was left of it--and perhaps un- earth some material that one hundred years of literary and historic research had not yet come across. Our labor was rewarding. The exact authenticated history of the Thoreau hut is hereby, to the very best of our knowledge, being set down for the first time in history, and the very fact that we might be contributing something to future students of Thoreaviana has certainly justified in our minds the time and effort put into this study.

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PART I

"Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden pond. . ." This was the beginning of an experiment and a way of life that his since led thousands of young men to desert cities, colleges and farms for the simple existence of life in the woods. A few have found what they were looking for, others returned disillusioned and bitter from their experiences. These men have lived in all manner of shelters, some in leantos and cabins they had built themselves, others in deserted farm houses and barns.

Thoreau, their unintentional leader, lived by the shores of Walden Pond on a piece of property owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson. He lived in a house of his own construction, a small, simple dwelling of shanty boards and plaster containing one window and one door. He bought the house from James Collins, an Irish railroad worker, tore it down and transfered it in cartloads to the proposed site of his new home. Before the snows had fallen in the winter of 1845 Thoreau had moved into the hut. It was a comfortable house. He had shingled the outside and plastered the inside. It was snug and warm with an indoor fireplace. In a diligent and economic fashion Thoreau had built the house for $28.12.

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PART II

"Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and
the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden Septem-
ber 6, 1847."

Thereafter the hut was neglected, and even Thoreau makes
little mention in his journals of returning to it. He lived for
15 more productive years and finally died at Concord in the Thor-
eau- Alcott house.

But what became of the hut? Canby writes in his work on
Thoreau: "The hut at Walden was left to the chipmunks and the
stars. But soon Hugh (Whelan) the gardner, who also had ambitions
of his own, moved it to the bean field which he proposed to turn
into an orchard, and with eighty dollars borrowed from Emerson
he began work on an addition. 'Irish like' he dug the cellar so
close that the old hut began to topple, then got drunk and ran
away from both Walden Pond and his wife."

We think it only proper to mention at this point that the
site of Thoreau's bean field has never been authenticated. There
are, of course, many conflicting versions as to its true locality.
If the bean field can be found, then we shall know where Hugh
Whelan moved the hut, or if we can find evidence of his digging
and evidence of the hut itself at such a place, we could establish
the locality of the bean field. Here, however, is an interesting
fact: there is only one place today on Emerson's original lot
in the woods just north of Walden Pond where there is a depression
of such proportions that it could easily be the cellar hole that

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Hugh Whelan dug. As yet there has been no excavation at this
spot, but it has been ascertained, through examination of the
humus within the depression, that the hole is more than fifty
years old. If evidence of the hut is found near this place in the
form of nails, and particularly plaster that checks under a chem-
ical analysis with that found at the original site of the hut, it
will be a rewarding discovery. Not only will the discoverer have
found the third site of the Thoreau hut, but he will have found
the locality of the bean field as well.

PART III

James Clark was the son of Brooks Clark, a farmer who lived
on Carlisle and Easterbrook road just outside the village of Con-
cord. James, who was born in 1815, was evidently more of a stu-
dent and a philosopher than a farmer, and he seems to have been
interested in Thoreau. From a diary or a journal kept by his
brother Daniel during these years we learn that James not only
took an interest in the man, but also in the hut. In September
1849. two years after Thoreau had left, he moved the hut to his
father's farm . The certainty of this transference is recorded
in Daniel Clark's diary. On Monday, Sept 3, 1849 Daniel writes:
"M 3. Some frost this morning. Drove the horse down to the
depot. Andrew and Mrs. Phelps started away, helpt, James move
his building from Walden Pond."

At the age of 39, five years later, James died. Evidently
his father had been humoring his son's whim in allowing the hut
to remain on his property unused. But on the death of James in

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1854 his father used the hut for storing grain. He was a prac-
ticed man, and an extra grainery was more important than a memory.
We find this verified in Ellery Channing's journals: "The windows
were gone in '63, and the plaster mostly cracked off, from the
moving to Old Clark's in the N. part of town, very near the open-
ing of the old Carlisle Road. Used as a place to store grain.
Visited with Blake and Brown September 11, '64."

Old Brooks Clark died on November 25, 1865 at the age of
90. His wife, Lydia, died two weeks later. All traces of the
son Daniel had disappeared, except for the all important journal.
In 1866 the farm was sold, and the new owner was one Daniel Sul-
livan. Sullivan was obviously not impressed with Thoreau, even
if he had heard of him, for he turned the house into a piggery,
and it was used as such for two years. In 1868 Sullivan tore
down the hut and used the rafters to strengthen his barn. This
was the tale told to Mr Raymond Emerson, the grandson of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, by Miss Mary Murray, one of Daniel Sullivan's two
daughters. The other daughter, Agnes, is living today in Concord.
Miss Agnes Murray related how, at the age of 10, she watched her
Father tear down the remains of the hut at the same site on which
it was placed by James Clark. Channing too verifies this story,
for in his writings we find, "I saw H's rafters, June 4, 1868, the
ruins of his house on the Carlisle road just pulled down." The
date is all important, for Agnes stated in 1947 that if her older
sister were living then she would be 90 years old. Thus by simple
arithmetic if in 1947 Mary would have been 90, then she was born
in 1857, thus making her 10 years old in 1858, allowing, of course,
that her birthday was nearer January 1858 than January 1857. Ray-

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mond Emerson now lives on the old Brooks-Clark farm. Channing
goes on to write: "The house stood in perfect condition so far as
the frame and covering to June 4, 1868, a period of twenty-three
years, and would have lasted a century. It was well built, the
covering being poor."

Thus was the history of Thoreau's house established. The
barn stands today on the Raymond Emerson property containing the
last remains of Thoreau's labor on the shores of Walden.

PART IV

There are, of course, many stories concerning the hut after
Thoreau left it, but probably the most interesting of these is
what we call the Etta Dodge story. It is certainly the best
known.

In repairing his scholarly book on Thoreau, Henry Seidel
Canby visited Mrs. Dodge at her home in Concord. She related how,
when she owned the Clark farm after Sullivan left it, the timbers
from the hut were used in the barn. Apperently Canby misunderstood
her (although he has since corrected himself) and assumed that
these timbers of which she spoke were in the barn or garage at her
present property on Sudbury Road. In his book Canby states, "The
cabin itself was so excellently built that it stood at least two
movings after Thoreau's death, was in perfect condition so far as
frame and covering until 1868, and ended by transubstantiation
into the fabric of a garage." (Canby's Thoreau p 217) Then in the
notes he adds, "The garage is on the estate of Mrs. Willietta Dodge
at Concord."

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Clark barn. She saved two, but in time, one became lost. The other she showed to Robbins. It was about two feet long, and possibly four or five inches square. She claimed that the piece was originally twice its present length when it first came into her possession. She said that she had cut it in half and presented one half to Henry S. Canby some years before, and understood that Mr. Canby cut his piece into an inkwell and presented the inkwell to Yale University.

## CONCLUSION

In gathering material for this project we came across much information that we could not use here. Not only had we found out what became of the hut, but also learned many other interesting stories, true and otherwise--such as the tale of the fallen British soldiers that Thoreau mentions. But behind all this is the inevitable falsification produced by a hundred years of gossip and ledgend, and it is often difficult to separate the truth from the imagination. The account which we have presented here his been verified, checked and re-checked until there seems little room for error. It is our hope that it may be of some use.

SECTION 2
Photographs

✓ Plate 1 Frontispiece. Henry David Thoreau

✓ Plate 2 View of the first church of Concord, where Thoreau delivered his oration after John Brown's trial and execution.

✓ Plate 3 Same from the side

✓ Plate 4 The house in which Thoreau was born and in which he spent much of his childhood.

✓ Plate 5 A view of the property on which he was born. The house mentioned above originally was built on this land, was later moved to a new possession.

✓ Plate 6 Rubble left from the fire in the Texas House, where Thoreau spent many of the years before and after the Walden experiment. View taken from the third floor.

✓ Plate 7 Stairs in the Texas House.

✓ Plate 8 Outside view of the Texas House. The small wing was once the pencil factory.

✓ Plate 9 The Thoreau-Alcott House. Here Thoreau spent his last years and died. The house is up for public sale.

✓ Plate 10 Emerson's house.

✓ Plate 11 The Thoreau room at the Antiquarian Society, Concord.

✓ Plate 12 The Concord river in flood time (by R. W. Robbins)

✓ Plate 13 Picture of the foundations of the outdoor fireplace mentioned in Walden near the site of the hut. (by R. W. Robbins)

✓ Plate 14 First picture of the foundations to the Thoreau hut. R. W. Robbins, the discoverer, holds up a piece of brick found in the site. (by R. W. Robbins)

✓ Plate 15 Material taken from the foundation site, now in the possession of R. W. Robbins. (by Edwin Way Teale)

✓ Plate 16 A nail from the Thoreau hut. (by Edwin Way Teale)