Emerson years The Old Manse was built in 1770 for
the Rev. William Emerson, father of minister
William Emerson and grandfather of
transcendentalist writer and lecturer
Ralph Waldo Emerson. The elder Rev. Emerson was the town minister in Concord, chaplain to the Provincial Congress when it met at Concord in October 1774 and later a chaplain to the
Continental Army. Emerson observed the fight at the
North Bridge, a part of the
Concord Fight, from his farm fields while his wife (Phebe Bliss Emerson) and children witnessed the fight from the upstairs windows of their house. Emerson died in October 1776 in West Rutland, Vermont, while returning home from
Fort Ticonderoga. His widow, Phebe Emerson, remarried to the Rev.
Ezra Ripley, who succeeded Emerson as the minister at First Parish Church in Concord. Their family continued to live in the Old Manse. Ripley served as Concord's town minister for 63 years. In October 1834, Ralph Waldo Emerson moved to Concord and boarded at the Manse where he lived with his aging step-grandfather Ezra Ripley. While there, he wrote the first draft of his essay "
Nature", a foundational work of the
Transcendentalist movement. Also while living at the Old Manse, on January 24, 1835, Emerson proposed in a letter to
Lydia Jackson. After their marriage, they moved elsewhere in Concord, to a home he named "Bush", now known as the
Ralph Waldo Emerson House.
Hawthorne years In 1842, the American writer
Nathaniel Hawthorne rented the Old Manse for $100 a year. He moved in with his wife, transcendentalist
Sophia Peabody, on July 9, 1842, as newlyweds. Peabody had previously visited Concord and met Ralph Waldo Emerson while working on a
bas-relief portrait medallion of his brother Charles Emerson, who had died in 1836. She praised the town to Hawthorne, who responded, "Would that we could build our cottage this very now amid the scenes. My heart thirsts and languishes to be there". Prior to their arrival at the Manse,
Henry David Thoreau created a vegetable garden for the couple. The Hawthornes lived in the house for three years. In the upstairs room that Hawthorne used as his study, the pair etched affectionate statements into the window panes. The inscription reads: :Man's accidents are God's purposes. Sophia A. Hawthorne 1843 :Nath Hawthorne This is his study :The smallest twig leans clear against the sky :Composed by my wife and written with her diamond :Inscribed by my husband at sunset, April 3 1843. In the Gold light. :SAH On the first anniversary of his marriage, Hawthorne and his neighbor, poet
Ellery Channing, searched the neighboring Concord River for the body of Martha Hunt, a local woman who drowned. Hawthorne wrote of the incident, "I never saw or imagined a spectacle of such perfect horror... She was the very image of death-agony." The incident inspired the climactic scene in his novel
The Blithedale Romance (1852). The Hawthornes hosted several notable guests while living here. In May 1845, future President of the United States
Franklin Pierce visited along with their mutual
Bowdoin College friend
Horatio Bridge. Peabody recalled the meeting fondly and recorded her first impression of Pierce as "loveliness and truth of character and natural refinement." Another visitor was
Margaret Fuller, whose sister Ellen had married another Concord writer named
Ellery Channing in 1842. Upon hearing of her engagement, Fuller had written to Sophia Peabody, "If ever I saw a man who combined delicate tenderness to understand the heart of a woman, with quiet depths and manliness enough to satisfy her, it is Mr. Hawthorne." During his time in the Old Manse, Hawthorne published about twenty sketches and tales, including "
The Birth-Mark" and "
Rappaccini's Daughter", which would be included in the collection
Mosses from an Old Manse (1846). In the introduction to that collection, he described the Old Manse: "Between two tall gateposts of roughhewn stone... we behold the gray front of the old parsonage, terminating the vista of an avenue of black ash trees."{{cite web
Modern history side After the Hawthornes, the home was occupied by
Sarah Bradford Ripley for several years. The house remained in use by the Emerson-Ripley family until 1939, and transitioned to the Trustees of Reservations on November 3, 1939. The house was conveyed complete with all its furnishings, and contains a remarkable collection of furniture, books, kitchen implements, dishware, and other items, as well as original wallpaper, woodwork, windows and architectural features. : Concord, The Old Manse The Old Manse was designated a
National Historic Landmark in 1966 and a
Massachusetts Archaeological/Historic Landmark the same year. The Manse is open seasonally for guided tours given by the Trustees of Reservations. The garden, originally created by Thoreau, has been recreated. The on-site book store in the house specializes in the American Revolution, women's history, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Transcendentalism, and sustainability. ==See also==