Return to Thoreau-Alcott House page
By Mrs. Caleb Henry Wheeler
The lot of land on which this house stands was part of the farm inherited by
Judge William Jones of Norridgewock, Maine, from the estate of his father,
Captain Samuel Jones, the blacksmith, and was sold at auction, August 22, 1815,
to H. H. Williams of Colrain for $75.60. Williams sold it in October, 1819, for
the same amount to Josiah Davis who had lately built a new house and store for
himself where the Concord Academy is now located. On this lot, Davis built a
house, barn and bookbindery, all of which he mortgaged to the Concord Bank in
1834. Meanwhile the map of 1830 marks the house "F. Potter", and he was
presumably the bookbinder who rented the house from Josiah Davis. Davis became
insolvent in 1838 and this "yellow house" was assigned in trust for the benefit
of his creditors and finally quitclaimed to the bank for $425 in 1845. The next
year the bank sold it for $875 to Henry L. Shattuck who turned it over to Daniel
Shattuck. In September, 1849, Shattuck sold it to John Thoreau for $1450 and the
Thoreau family lived here until Louisa Alcott bought it for her sister, Anna
Alcott Pratt. Here John Thoreau and Henry David Thoreau died. The ell was used
by the Thoreaus for the secret part of their pencil business and was fixed up by
Anna Pratt for her father, Bronson Alcott.
Dr. Edward Emerson's memoir of Thoreau says that the business management of the
pencil business was in the hands of Henry's sister Sophia, and she carried on
the whole direction after his death. Henry's discovery of a method of gathering
the finest graphite by an air blast and mixing with potter's clay instead of
wax, made a much improved pencil. In the end he rigged up a drill which made a
hole for the lead like any modern pencil. Warren Miles was employed by the
Thoreaus to do the routine work and later brought out the business. Secrecy was
traditional In the pencil business from the time in 1812 when William Munroe
mixed his graphite, glue, and bayberry wax behind locked doors in his little
cottage on Church Green. The Thoreaus found that they could sell the finely
ground graphite to electrotypers for ten dollars a pound while pencils were six
dollars a gross. Henry probably stopped making pencils because the sale of
graphite was more profitable. Sophia and Henry packed and addressed the graphite
at the Main Street house so that the men at the factory would not know who the
buyers were. His remark that he had made a perfect pencil so there was no need
for him to make any more, was typical of him, but it also served to put off
questioners who might have discovered this secret source of profit.
It was from a pen in back of this house that the Thoreau family pig escaped, as
related In "Men of Concord" and his boat was kept on the river bank behind the
house across the street.
Successive occupants continued to paint the house yellow until a few years ago
and it still remains yellow on the picture post-cards. Recent biographies of
Bronson Alcott and of Louisa have much to say about the serene home which Anna
Pratt made for her father in his last years.
[The Concord Journal of September 22, 1938. Reprinted in Thoreau Soc. Bull. 24, p.1 (July 1948).]