The Old Manse

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Old Manse
(U.S. National Historic Landmark)
The Old Manse, viewed from its Concord River side.
The Old Manse, viewed from its Concord River side.
Location: Concord, Massachusetts
Coordinates: 42°28′6″N 71°20′58″W / 42.46833, -71.34944Coordinates: 42°28′6″N 71°20′58″W / 42.46833, -71.34944
Built/Founded: 1769
Architect: Unknown
Architectural style(s): No Style Listed
Designated as NHL: December 29, 1962
Added to NRHP: October 15, 1966
NRHP Reference#: 66000775[1]
Governing body: Private

The Old Manse is an historic house famous for its American literary associations. It is located beside the North Bridge over the Concord River in Concord, Massachusetts, and now owned and operated as a nonprofit museum by the Trustees of Reservations.

[edit] History

The Old Manse was built in 1770 by Rev. William Emerson, father of noted minister Rev. William Emerson and grandfather of famous transcendentalist writer and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson. The builder 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. Rev. Emerson observed the fight at the North Bridge, a part of the Concord Fight, from his farm fields while his wife and children witnessed the fight from the upstairs windows of their house.

Rev. Emerson died in October 1775 in West Rutland, Vermont, while returning home from Fort Ticonderoga. His widow remarried, to the Rev. Ezra Ripley, and the family continued to live in the Old Manse. Rev. Ripley served as Concord's town minister for 63 years.

In 1842, the famous American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne rented the Old Manse. He and his new bride, transcendentalist Sophia Peabody, moved in as newlyweds. Friend Henry David Thoreau created a vegetable garden for the couple.[2] The Hawthornes lived in the house for three years. In the upstairs room that Hawthorne used as his study, one can still view affectionate sentiments that the two etched 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[3]

Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) contains his description of the house as well as a number of short stories he wrote while living there. [4]

The house remained in use by the Emerson-Ripley family until 1939, and was donated to the Trustees of Reservations in 1945. The house was donated 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.

The Old Manse was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966 and a Massachusetts Archaeological/Historic Landmark the same year.

[edit] Notes and citations

  1. ^ National Register Information System. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service (2007-01-23).
  2. ^ The Old Manse. The Trustees of Reservations. Retrieved on 28 April 2008.
  3. ^ Cheevers, Susan (2006). American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau; Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work. Detroit: Thorndike Press. Large print edition. p. 174. ISBN 078629521X
  4. ^ A 1950 photo at the following webpage clearly illustrates Hawthorne's description of the front of the house: "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."
    Ryan, D. Michael (May 2001). Emerson, the Bridge and the British. The Concord Magazine: The Ezine for and about Concord, Massachusetts. Retrieved on 28 April 2008.

[edit] External links

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