Unlike other writers and thinkers associated with Concord - including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Amos Bronson Alcott, and Louisa May Alcott - Henry David Thoreau was the only one born in the town. He was born in this house on July 12, 1817, and lived in town for most of his life.
The building is a 2+1/2-story wood-frame structure from circa 1730. John Wheeler built it, but it eventually landed in the hands of the Minot family. It served as a functional farmhouse for 200 years, featuring a fieldstone foundation and a large central chimney.
Shortly after Thoreau's death in 1862, scholars, disciples, and tourists began seeking out the author's birthplace. The Thoreau Farm Trust, a non-profit organization, acquired the house in 1995. The site underwent an extensive restoration and is now a museum open to the public.
You can visit the farm on weekends between May and October. It functions as a museum now, showing off the clapboard siding and the dentillated cornice of the house where Thoreau was born.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Written by Kyle McLonely
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