Ellery Channing in the 1855 Massachusetts CensusReprinted from Thoreau Research Newsletter, vol. 2, no. 2 (April 1991): 8, with permission. In TRN 1.3 (p. 1), Edmund A. Schofield describes and transcribes the entry on the Thoreau family in the 1855 Massachusetts census, noting that Henry’s occupation was listed as “Gentleman.” It may be worth pointing out that this designation was fairly common in Concord entries, and was used to describe a number of prominent residents, including the historian Daniel Shattuck, the lawyer Moses Prichard, and the manufacturer William Monroe. Emerson, by contrast, is described as a “Writer of Books.” An even greater contrast, however, is the entry for Thoreau’s friend Ellery Charming, on the same page as the Thoreau family entry described by Schofield: Charming is listed as a “Do Nothing,” the only such sarcastic designation in the entire census. The census taker, incidentally, was the ubiquitous Sam Staples, local constable, tax collector and jailer, the same man responsible for putting Thoreau in jail in 1846 (Harding, Days, p. 199). Whether the label of “Do Nothing” represented Staples’s appraisal of Charming or Channing’s own self-mocking response to the enumerator’s question, it probably does represent a consensus of Concord opinion of the feckless Charming, whose wife and children had recently left him after years of virtual nonsupport. Return to Robert Sattelmeyer’s Home Page
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