Return to | Steve's research page at Thoreau Institute | or | Estabrook start page |

August 7, 2001

THE CRAZY UNCLE and the HOLE TO CHINA

During 1852, Thoreau added to the fourth draft of Walden, in the "Economy" chapter, an anecdote about a character who has come to be known locally as "the crazy uncle" (for date, see, J. Lyndon Shanley, The Making of Walden with the Text of the First Version, Urbana-Chicago [1957] pp. 31 & 72). Thoreau wrote in Walden,

"As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made" (Walden,  Princeton ed. p. 58).

Eight years later, a more rustic version in Thoreau's journal has the laconic rhythms of country speech. It tells us that the crazy fellow dug his hole in Easterbrooks Country and adds a memorable bit of folk wisdom about foxes and man.

June 27-28, 1860. "Up Assabet to [Jacob] Farmer's.... Farmer says that he found on the 24th a black snake laying her eggs on the side of the hill between his peach orchard and the ledge in the woods. He showed me the place today....Was close by where his uncle (?) tried to dig through to the other side of the world. Dug more or less for three years. Used to dig nights, as long as one candle lasted. Left a stone just between him and the other side, not to be removed til he was ready to marry Washington's sister. The foxes now occupy his hole....Farmer said that he thought foxes did not live so much in the depths of the woods as on open hillsides, where they lay out and overlooked the operations of men,--studied their ways,--which made them so cunning."

[Thoreau, Journals XIII: 375-77 (1906 ed.), June 27-28, 1860. The parenthetical question-mark is Thoreau's. Thoreau often dropped by Jacob Farmer's place (now 761 Lowell Road) for talk about natural history.]

The "hole to China" was perhaps rediscovered thirty years ago by Mary R. Fenn. Mrs. Fenn wrote in 1971:

"There was once a peach orchard on a gentle slope S.W. of the [Estabrook] farmhouse. A later owner of the orchard, Jacob Farmer, had a crazy uncle...who attempted to dig a hole to China in that area. He placed a large stone 'just between him and the other side, not to be removed till he was ready to marry into the Washington's sister.' Presumably he never did marry into the Washington family, for the Walking Society, going from the Peach Orchard toward the Estabrook Place, came across a hole in the ground, pretty well filled in - with an exceptionally large flat stone lying in it. Then, crossing the stone-wall-enclosed field toward the Estabrook cellar, we came upon a dozen or more stone circles..." (Mary R. Fenn, "Report of the Walking Society: The Lime Quarries," Thoreau Society Bulletin No. 114, Winter 1971 [also in Buerger, Portfolio, LWV p. 100, Dec. 1994].)

Mrs. Fenn's daughter, Mary Gale Fenn, prepared a map that shows the Peach Orchard but not the crazy uncle's hole ("Map of Thoreau's Easterbrook Country," Thoreau Society Booklet No. 25 [1970]). In 1973, Ms. Allie Bemis wrote an illustrated paper on the Estabrook Woods. Her family had owned a large portion of the woods prior to the sale to Harvard, and she had spent much time in the Woods as a child. She related:

"Mrs. Fenn learned the location of the Peach Orchard from Ben Clark who owned (owns?) the land. (None of the peach trees are left.) There she found a hole with a large rock in it that fits the description of Farmer's uncle's (?) hole.  I think this is the hole that she found. [Ells note: Ms Bemis inserted at this point in her text a photograph of a depression in forest floor with a distinctive rock in its center.] It has filled in a lot but the stone is quite obvious. It has not been removed so I guess that Farmer's uncle was never ready to marry Washington's sister" (Allie Bemis [Bueti], "Notes on the Land and the People of Estabrook Woods," unpubl. senior paper, Concord Academy, April 1973; copy in CFPL.)

The map accompanying Ms. Bemis' paper has a tiny notation marking her understanding of the location of "Crazy uncle's hole" (cite: "The Estabrook Woods, A Composite of Mary Gail Fenn's map of Thoreau's Easterbrook Country [made in 1970], 1942 map of Concord prepared by Harvard U, 1958 Topo map of the Concord Quadrangle, and my own findings" [ms. 1973]).  J. Walter Brain has also visited this site. But I am not sure that anyone can confirm that the crazy uncle ever came there, too.

Note by Stephen F. Ells
steveells@earthlink.net
For a web site about Thoreau's Easterbrooks Country-Estabrook Woods,
see <http://home.earthlink.net/~steveells>.