The Homes of Henry David Thoreau
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WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY JOHN ROMAN
“I have learned that even the smallest house can be a home.”
Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond is his most famous residence, yet historians and scholars also credit several other sites in Massachusetts that served as “home” to this American literary figure. Looking into Thoreau’s past offers a glimpse into how his early years played a role in shaping the artist he would eventually become. Between the years 1812 and 1819, John and Cynthia Thoreau had four children: Helen, John, Henry, and Sofia. The farmhouse in Concord, where Henry was born in 1817, is still standing at 341 Virginia Road, finely restored by the Thoreau Farm Trust in 2010. In 1880, eighteen years after Thoreau died, the house was moved from its original location at 215 Virginia Road to its present site. The first year of Henry’s life was spent in the Virginia Road home before the family relocated eleven miles north to Chelmsford, Massachusetts. There, John and Cynthia rented “The Proctor House” and opened a 34
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| Summer 2022
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
dry goods store, both situated near the town meetinghouse. Three years later, when their shop proved unsuccessful, the Thoreaus moved to an apartment in Boston located at 4 Pinckney Street, a brick townhouse still standing on Beacon Hill. Between the ages of four and nine years old, Henry grew up just steps from the State House and Public Garden amid the city’s crowded urban bustle. These are the formative years in any child’s life, and so it was for young Henry. Decades later, Thoreau wrote in his journals that while living in Boston he remembered the family’s frequent visits to Walden Pond in Concord for summer vacations and getaways; not surprising considering they had many relatives in Concord. The contrast of Boston to the rural setting of Walden left a deep and lasting impression on the boy. Reminiscing on his childhood feelings, Henry noted that he preferred Walden Pond’s “… recess among the pines” to the harshness of
city life, and felt Walden was an early oasis for him where, “…sunshine and shadows were the only inhabitants.” The Thoreaus moved back to Concord in 1826 and rented what was referred to locally as “The Brick House” in Concord Village. The following year the family made a temporary move to 166 Main Street, and shortly thereafter made another move across the street to a home at 185 Main Street, settling there for the next eight years. In 1833, at age 16, Henry Thoreau was accepted into Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He dormed in Hollis Hall, one of only six buildings on the grounds of the small college. While Thoreau lived on campus, his family moved in with relatives at a home on Monument Street in Concord, but Henry never resided there. Thoreau had difficulty adjusting to college life and was continually plagued with illnesses during his four years at Harvard. It’s been suggested that early signs
