Henry David Thoreau land and property surveys : 1846-1860.
(Mixed Material)

Filed in a single sequence;,arranged according to Library-devised numbering system (by and large alphabetical by name of property owner)

Moss, Marcia. A catalog of Thoreau's surveys in the Concord Free Public Library (Geneseo, N.Y. : Thoreau Society, 1976)

Ca. 190 surveys, 1846-1860, primarily of land and property in Concord, Mass. (including three of Walden Pond). Collection also includes surveys of land in Acton, Bedford, Boxborough, Carlisle, Framingham, Haverhill, Lincoln, Littleton, and Stow, one well-known survey of the Concord River "from East Sudbury to Billerica Mills," and one of Eagleswood in Perth Amboy, N.J. (done for Marcus Spring).

(Cont.) Surveys include properties belonging to A. Bronson Alcott, Edward Carver Damon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Francis R. Gourgas, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edward S. Hoar, Samuel Hoar, Edmund Hosmer, John Hosmer, David Loring, the Concord Mill Dam Company, Abel Moore and John Brooks Moore, William Munroe, Daniel Shattuck, Samuel Staples, Cyrus Stow, the Town of Concord, and others. The sizes and dimensions of the surveys vary considerably, the largest being the rolled river survey (38 x 233 cm.). Some of the surveys in the collection are pencil drafts, some finished products in ink.

Thoreau's volume of field notes and other ms. calculations and notes he made in preparing the surveys (also included in the Library's Henry David Thoreau Papers) shed additional light on individual items in the survey collection. Although not strictly a survey, Thoreau's "Statistics of the Bridges Over Concord River, Between Heard's Bridge and Billerica Dam ..." is included in the collection, as are several traced or copied maps.

Henry David Thoreau Land and Property Surveys, in Henry David Thoreau Papers, Special Collections, Concord Free Public Library, Concord, Mass.

Available on microfilm;,for use in Library.

Bulk of surveys:,Sophia Thoreau;,bequest;,1876/77.

American author, lecturer, naturalist, student of native American artifacts and life, transcendentalist, land surveyor, and life-long resident of Concord, Mass. Schoolteacher (public and private) and tutor at various times. Active opponent of slavery and critic of society. Born July 12, 1817; died May 6, 1862. Began keeping journal--the source for much of his writing--in 1834. Graduated from Harvard College in 1837. Lecturer for Concord Lyceum from 1838. Lived in Emerson household 1841-1843. Built house at Walden Pond, where he lived from summer of 1845 until Sept., 1847.

(Cont.) Actively took up land and property surveying in 1840's, working both for Town of Concord and for private property owners. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers was published in 1849, Walden, or, Life in the Woods in 1854, other works (several edited from HDT's manuscripts by his sister Sophia) posthumously. Complete works: Riverside Edition (1894); Walden Edition (1906); Princeton Edition (ongoing as of 1/97).

Finding aid in Library.

Forms Series I of: Henry David Thoreau papers.