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The Thoreau Institute
at Walden Woods Library
About Thoreau's Life and Writings
Texts and Links
including Thoreau's contemporaries, his readings, current
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related documents
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:
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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.
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Source:
The Raymond
Adams Collection (Thoreau Society
Collections) at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods.
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Report
errors to the
Curator of
Collections
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