Middlesex School's
Thoreau Museum of Natural History
was at the entrance to Estabrook Woods 
 

A tradition of natural history studies was created in 1906

He made his most long-lasting contribution to the School, however, by creating and guiding the Thoreau Museum of Natural History. He first raised six thousand dollars for its construction in 1906 . The following year, the author and public figure Franklin B. Sanborn described it as "a fine building, with a collection already of good size. The region about this school (on Bateman's pond) is one often frequented by Thoreau and his comrades" [See list of dates of Thoreau walks, below]. Correspondence in the Olmstead Associates file in the Library of Congress described it as a very attractive little building designed by Wheelwright and Haven.  Seven sheets of its plans are at the Olmstead National Historic Site in Brookline.

The Museum was located beside Eliot Hall, and the path to the old causeway to Estabrook Woods (the site of the proposed bridge) ran right in front of its door. This museum contained classrooms, a library, and collections of local natural history. Guest lecturers were invited on academic topics (see Appendix 2). Below is a recently discovered photo of the Museum in 1906, the year of its construction:

The best evidence of its activities at the Museum under this dedicated teacher can be found in the wide range of its publications: natural history studies of national as well as regional wildlife. A partial catalog is attached as Appendix 1. Middlesex School, however, closed the Thoreau Museum in 1948 and dispersed its collections. For example, it had contained the herbarium of Sophia Thoreau (Henry's sister), which she had given to Eliza Hosmer after Henry's death. This was put on the market by Middlesex School ca. 1948 and was purchased by the Thoreau Society (Ruth Wheeler, "A Thoreau Herbarium," Thoreau Society Bulletin, 29 [October 1949]: 2).

There's a surprise: though the Museum closed in 1948, its building still existed in 2001 near the entrance to Estabrook Woods. [Torn down in 2002.]

To my great surprise, when I circulated the recently discovered 1906 photo, I learned that the building that had once housed the Thoreau Museum had not been torn down but still is in its place above the entrance to Estabrook Woods. Though unmarked, it is unmistakable. [Torn down in 2002.]

Caption: The former Thoreau Museum of Natural History is now (May 2001) the left classroom wing of Eliot Hall, joined to it by a corridor. It still stands at the entrance to the Estabrook Woods, and  it could be restored to be again an ecology study center. [Torn down in 2002.]

In front of the former museum building is a grooved ledge in which an old plaque has been embedded probably since the Museum was constructed. I was interested to see that the plaque, which Jim Saltonstall thinks has been there for almost a hundred years, talks about the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and its effect on the climate. Good for those teachers.

"The groves and striae in these igneous ledges were made by the great ice sheet, which moved over here toward the south east, exposing them as a plough the boulder. It is estimated that the ice was about a mile thick, and existed here from 7000 to 30,000 years ago. It's gradual disappearance was possibly due to the gradual lowering of the land surface and the variation in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

The former Thoreau Museum could once again become an ecology study center. In writing of his disappointment of the school's plans to build in Estabrook,  plans, world-famous Ernst Mayr, the creator of the Harvard-MCZ ecology study center in Estabrook Woods, offered to help Middlesex School create a joint study curriculum with Harvard, if only the School would stay out of the woods. He wrote,

• "As you may know, in recognition of the community's assemblage of four hundred acres of buffering conservation land, the Museum of Comparative Zoology recently agreed to hold its seven hundred acres in perpetuity for research. I think its educational value will be increasingly recognized as the decades pass. If you agree with me about the long-term potential of our joint efforts, I hope you will share your views with appropriate people in the school community. I am sure a way can be found to satisfy both the School's perceived needs for facilities and the protection of Estabrook Woods. Perhaps the School's current capital drive can offer solutions to this problem. If this effort is successful, I would be happy to lend my support to the creation of a joint biological curriculum project that might engage the interest of both our institutions." [Ernst Mayr to Nathaniel Davis, 12/30/1998. The response of  the Middlesex School trustees did not mention or respond to this offer.]
   

Appendix 1. Partial List of publications of the former Thoreau Museum of Natural History at Middlesex School

BARNES, Jr., C. B. (1917) [A list of Shells found in Concord.]. Proceedings of the Thoreau Museum of Natural History. I:48-49.

CARNEGIE III, G. M. (1901) A List of Batrachia collected at Concord, Mass. Proceedings of the Thoreau Museum of Natural History. I:31-32.

DEMPSEY, J. H. (1915) A List of Araneida collected at Concord, Mass. Proceedings of the Thoreau Museum of Natural History. I:42-43.

HAWKINS, D.C. (1914). [Shells of Concord, Mass.], Proceedings of the Thoreau Museum of Natural History. I:30.

HEFFENGER, C.P.W.W.; HOPKINS, J.B. (1910) A List of coleptera collected at Concord, Mass. Proceedings of the Thoreau Museum of Natural History. II: 7-10.

HOWE, Jr., REGINALD HEBER. (1904-1905) A List of Birds [at Middlesex School]. Bulletin of the Middlesex School Natural History Society. Nos. 3-6.

HOWE, Jr., REGINALD HEBER. (1905) A List of Mammals [observed at Middlesex School 1901-1905]. Bulletin of the Middlesex School Natural History Society. No. 7.

HOWE, Jr., REGINALD HEBER. (1908) Massachusetts Records. Auk. XXV, p.323 (American Ornithologists' Union). [From Estabrook country: Goshawk & Prairie Horned Lark.]

HOWE, Jr., REGINALD HEBER. (1908) New Massachusetts Records for the Great Gray Owls [in Estabrook Country]. Auk. XXV, p.84 (American Ornithologists' Union).

HOWE, Jr., REGINALD HEBER. (1912-14.) A Monograph of the Usneacea of the United States and Canada. Memoir of the Thoreau Museum of Natural History.

HOWE, Jr., REGINALD HEBER; WARBURG, J.P.; WINSOR, C.P. (1913) The Usneas [lichens] of the World, 1752-1912. Proceedings of the Thoreau Museum of Natural History. I:15-25.

HOWE, Jr., REGINALD HEBER. (1913) Holboell's Grebe Frozen in Bateman's Pond in Concord, Mass. Auk. XXX: 267 (American Ornithologists' Union).

HOWE, Jr., REGINALD HEBER. (1917-1920) Manual of the Odonata of New England. Memoirs of the Thoreau Museum of Natural History. v. 2, Pts. 1-6,

RICKETTSON, Jr., OLIVER G. (1911) A List of Reptilia collected at Concord, Mass. Proceedings of the Thoreau Museum of Natural History. I:11-13.

WHITE, JACK C. (1914) A List of Mammalia collected at Concord, Mass. [since 1901]. Proceedings of the Thoreau Museum of Natural History. I:33-36.

Appendix 2. Example of a guest lecture at the Museum
 

"I want to talk to you a little while about natural history, particularly about what seems to me to be the highest development of native animal life here in the town, an animal that advanced so far that it observed and described its environment Upstairs, in your museum, at the extreme right end of the room you close the story of nature with those beautiful dioramas of civilization which you students made and you, too, showed man destroying his own species. Now, this Concord specimen of Homo Sapiens (for he called himself an animal) went by the name of Henry Thoreau . In what I think is the first journal entry of the thousands he made, he said of himself:

• 'It may be well if first of all I should give some account of my own species and variety I am about five feet seven inches in height, of a light complexion, rather slimly built, and just approaching the Roman age of manhood. One who faces West oftener than East walks out of a house with a better grace than he goes in who loves winter as well as summer forest as well as field darkness as well as light. Rather solitary than gregarious not migratory nor dormant but to be raised at any season, by day or night, not by the pulling of a bell-wire, but by a smart stroke upon any pine tree in the woods of Concord' [Note 1].

"Let us look at what he says, item by item: 'One who faces West oftener than East'; that might simply mean that Thoreau liked to walk through the western parts of town. So he did, and often out your own Lowell Road until just this side of Clark's nursery (not a nursery then) he would leave the road and go across the valley toward Curly Pate Hill (I wonder if you call the hill to the east of Bateman's Pond by the name of 'Curly Pate' now) to where there is a brook coming down to the pond on the opposite side of this building. But when Thoreau says he faces West oftener than East, he means that he breaks with tradition. Civilization has proceeded westward, so that when one faces eastward, he is facing the past . But when one faces west, he in a figurative way faces the future.

" 'Forest as well as field.' A field, you see, is a cultivated bit of land, and so might stand for not only scenery but also mere utility. A field is valuable as it pays money to its owner; it is to be used for profit, and when it ceases to yield a profit it is allowed to lie fallow and finally to revert to the forest again So Thoreau is saying, I like things that are beautiful whether they are profitable or not. I like fields, also, but too many people like nothing but fields, nothing but that which pays a profit in hard cash.

" 'Darkness as well as light.' In other words, it is easy enough to do the conventional thing, to follow the crowds in matters of taste, to conform to some Middlesex School standard of what a boy should do to be an honor to the School; but can you like the things you like whether anyone else does or not? Can you like darkness because you see beauty in it, even though everyone says the dark is ugly? Now perhaps you begin to see why I think that this specimen of Homo Sapiens is the highest development of the species ever to live in Concord."

Note 1. Walter Harding identifies this as a manuscript fragment in the Berg Collection that was written about 1841-2 (Harding, The Days of Henry Thoreau [Princeton: 1982] p. 124).

Source:  Raymond Adams, Lecture on Thoreau, Middlesex School Anvil, XXXII (October, 1934): 1, p. 19-23.
 

Appendix 3. On the following days Henry Thoreau's journals refer to the area now known as Middlesex School.

01/28/ 1853
06/10
12/28

08/28/ 1854
08/30

03/28/ 1857
05/18
06/07
06/09
06/24
08/13
09/04
11/02
11/05
11/06
11/07
11/11
11/13
11/14
11/27

04/21/ 1858
05/29
06/19
11/07
11/08

10/03/ 1859

05/10/ 1860
09/03
09/11
11/10

Return to | Middlesex Project Start Page |