Thoreau’s Illustrated Atlas

is a subset of

Thoreau’s Chronological Atlas

 my monthly journal concerning:

Living by Thoreau’s Mill Brook

Currently featuring Results of an ongoing experiment to map the location of Thoreau’s surveys as provided online courtesy of the Concord Free Public Library (CFPL)  The Concord Museum and the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass , The Morgan Library & Museum plus Thoreau’s Field Notes manuscript (CFPL microfilm) that were reviewed and transcribed by numbered pages.

Gleason’s 1906 Concord map is used as a modern frame of reference and data source.

Marcia Moss publication “A CATALOG OF THOREAU’S SURVEYS IN THE Concord Free Public Library”  Edited by Marcia Moss with access provided courtesy of the Thoreau Society.

“On August 11, 1852, Thoreau records in his Journal:

“Alcott says I should survey Concord and put down every house exactly as it stands with the name.”

In fact, Alcott kept talking about the proposed atlas and went so far as to suggest in his now famous Superintendent of Schools Report of 1860 and 1861, that Thoreau should make an illustrated Atlas for use in the community and the schools. Unfortunately, Thoreau died before he could accomplish this, but his surveys and Field Notes book have been kept together in the Library and have often been used by people to identify ownership of Concord land.

Thoreau had various jobs as a surveyor such as the subdividing of woodlots and the, “Ministerial lots for the sale of the wood and the privately owned lots into smaller ones for housing. Many times it was necessary for him to retrace boundaries as ancient as two hundred years old.

The earliest mention which we have of his woodlot surveying is a signed receipt from the Misses Hosmer for surveying of their woodlot and making a plan of the same dated Dec. 18, 1645. However, we do not have the survey itself. This plan was made before he started keeping his Field Notes in 1849 with the brief notes on the survey for Isaac Watt’s. They continue on up to December 1860.” <Moss>

For more information, contact me at:

allanhschmidt@gmail.com

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