Tag: Emerson

First Parish in Concord (1901)

by Dan//Churches, Concord, Greek Revival

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Concord’s first church congregation was gathered in 1636 in Cambridge, with its first meetinghouse being constructed in Concord soon after (opposite the current church) on Lexington Road. This was replaced by the second meetinghouse, built between 1667 and 1673, and the third, built in 1711. This third church was rotated in 1741 to face the road, but burned down in 1900. It was therefore replaced by the current church, completed in 1901, which reproduced its predecessor as much as possible. During the ministry of Ezra Ripley (1778-1841), the congregation moved away from the traditional Puritan Calvinist doctrines and became Unitarian. Henry David Thoreau signed-off from membership in the church in 1841; his funeral services were later held there. Ralph Waldo Emerson affirmed his membership in 1865. Today, the First Parish in Concord is a Unitarian Universalist church.

The Old Manse (1770)

by Dan//Colonial, Concord, Houses

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The famous house in Concord known as the “Old Manse,” has associations with the Revolutionary War and with two of America’s greatest literary figures. It was built in 1770 as a “manse”, or parsonage, for the town’s minister, William Emerson. Emerson was there, on April 19, 1775, when the Revolutionary War began at the Old North Bridge, located just behind the Manse property (and now part of Minute Man National Historical Park). Emerson went on to serve as a chaplain with the Continental Army, but died of a fever in October 1776, during the Fort Ticonderoga Expedition. In 1778, Ezra Ripley became Concord’s new minister. He boarded at the Old Manse and in 1780 married William Emerson’s widow, Phebe Bliss Emerson. William Emerson’s son, also named William, became a minister. His son was the famous Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who lived in the Old Manse, his ancestral home, from 1834-1835, before purchasing his own house in Concord. It was during his residence in the Old Manse that Emerson wrote the first draft of his classic work, Nature.

Ezra Ripley died in 1841 and from 1842 to 1845, the Old Manse was rented by Nathaniel Hawthorne and his new wife, Sophia Peabody. It was during this period that Hawthorne would write many of the stories featured in his collection, Mosses from an Old Manse, including his introductory description of the Old Manse that would help make the building famous. In 1846, the Hawthorne’s left the Manse because Ezra Ripley’s son, Samuel Ripley, returned to live in his childhood home, although he died the following year. His wife, Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley, who had mastered numerous subjects and seven languages, lived on for another two decades, exchanging views with many of the intellectual leaders of the times. She lived through the Civil War, which claimed the life of her younger son, Lt. Ezra Ripley.

When Sarah and Samuel Ripley’s granddaughter, Sarah Ripley Thayer Ames, died in 1939, according to her wishes the house and its contents were sold to The Trustees of Reservations. The Old Manse is now a museum where visitors can tour this National Historic Landmark.