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Edward Waldo Emerson (1844-1930)

Letter to Harry A. McGraw, 22 October 1920
and
Plan of Walden Pond, Concord, Mass., with location of Thoreau's bean-field
marked by Edward W. Emerson, October 22nd, 1920


Pines
Shanty
Pines
Bean Field
About 1856
HDT planted
this field with
white pines for
RWE. A fire in
the woods killed
them in 1896


Harry A McGraw, Esq.

Dear Sir.
      The bean-field where Thoreau had, in self defense, to “effect the transmigration” of the wood chuck was in the square between the Lincoln Road and the wood roads, as in the plan. When the pines perished in a wood-fire it grew up to birches and scrub oaks, as now seen. Age and disease have destroyed nearly all of the pines which made a screen, in their prime, to the house.
                                                                               Sincerely yours Edward W. Emerson


A Note on the Text:

  • Plan 1st published in Henry D. Thoreau Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) p. 151.

  • Source: The Raymond Adams Collection (Thoreau Society Collections) at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods.

  • Report errors to the Curator of Collections



 

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