Stories From Special Collections:
Herbert Wendell Gleason
T
BY ANKE VOSS
The Concord Free Public Library’s Special Collections holds a rich and extensive collection relating to Herbert Wendell Gleason (1855-1937), a prominent American landscape photographer and environmentalist. The holdings include close to 7,000 Gleason negatives on glass plates and film, Gleason’s slide lecture “Thoreau’s Country,” albums of Concord, and Thoreau-related images compiled by Gleason himself, as well as correspondence and lecture notes. The Library Corporation, owners and stewards of the Library’s Special Collections, acquired the collection in two separate purchases, including a portion from Roland Wells Robbins - historian, archaeologist, and excavator in 1945 of the foundation of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond. In 1997 and 2000, the Library’s Special Collections received grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to arrange, describe, and create access to these collections. Herbert Wendell Gleason was born in Malden, Massachusetts. He attended Williams College and received his Bachelor of Divinity from Andover Theological Seminary in 1882. He married Lulie Wadsworth Rounds in 1883. His first career was in the Congregational ministry. He worked as a pastor in Minnesota until 1899, when he 54
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retired from the ministry and moved back to Massachusetts to pursue a H.W. Gleason at Thoreau’s cairn, career as a photographer. Gleason Walden Pond. May 18, 1908 found his calling by documenting the natural world through his photography. His admiration of the works of Henry David Thoreau drew him to Concord for regular visits for the rest of his life; capturing over four decades, the locations, wildlife, and the plants about which Thoreau had written. Gleason’s remarkable images serve as a window into Thoreau’s life. They also chronicle the changes in Concord’s natural world over nearly a half-century. While Gleason consulted Thoreau’s writings and talked with Concord residents who remembered Thoreau, he also regularly referred to maps of Concord and the significant collection of Thoreau surveys in the Concord Free Public Library. The Boston publishing firm of Houghton Mifflin hired Gleason to provide photographs for its twentyvolume publication, The Manuscript Edition of The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906). Gleason’s work also illustrated Houghton Mifflin’s 1917 Through the Year with Thoreau. Gleason also supported himself by developing over thirty slide lectures on subjects he photographed. His wife Sun sparkles on Walden Pond, from was the colorist for his slides. The Heywood’s Peak. October 21, 1920 only surviving slide lecture, “Thoreau’s
