Ralph Waldo Emerson 1,2,3 was born4 on 25 May 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts. He died5 on 27 Apr 1882 in Concord, Merrimack, New Hampshire.
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| Ralph Waldo Emerson |
He was a philosopher, a
transcendentalist, and a poet.
Emerson was born in Boston, Mass.,
son of Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian
minister, from a well-known line of
ministers. Emerson's father, who called his son "a rather dull
scholar",
died in 1811, less than two weeks
short of Emerson's eighth birthday. The young Emerson was
subsequently sent to the Boston Latin
School in 1812 at the age of nine. In October 1817, at fourteen,
Emerson went to Harvard College and
was appointed the Freshman's President, a position which gave
him a room free of charge. He waited
tables at Commons, a dining hall at Harvard, reducing the cost of
his board to one quarter of the full
fee, and he received a scholarship. To complement his meager salary,
he tutored and taught during the
winter vacation at his Uncle Ripley's school in Waltham,
Massachusetts.
After Emerson graduated from Harvard
in 1821 at the age of eighteen, he assisted his brother in a
school for young ladies established
in their mother's house, after he had established his own school in
Chelmsford, Massachusetts; when his
brother went to Göttingen to study divinity, Emerson took charge
of the school. Over the next several
years, Emerson made his living as a schoolmaster, then went to
Harvard Divinity School, and emerged
as a Unitarian minister in 1829. A dispute with church officials
over the administration of the
Communion service, and misgivings about public prayer led to his
resignation in 1832.
Emerson met his first wife, Ellen
Louisa Tucker, in Concord, New Hampshire and married her when she
was 18. She died of tuberculosis at
the age of 20 on February 8, 1831. Emerson was heavily affected
by her death, visiting her grave
daily and once even opening her coffin to see for himself that she was
dead. Despite his marriage, there is
evidence pointing to Emerson being bisexual. During early years at
Harvard, he found himself 'strangely
attracted' to a young freshman named Josh Gay about whom he
wrote sexually charged poetry. Gay
would be only the first of his infatuations and interests, with
Nathaniel Hawthorne numbered among
them.
Emerson toured Europe in 1832 and
later wrote of his travels in English Traits (1856). During this trip,
he met William Wordsworth, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. Emerson
maintained contact with Carlyle until
the latter's death in 1881. He also served as Carlyle's agent in the
U.S. His travels abroad brought him
to England, France (in 1848), Italy, and the Middle East.
In 1835, Emerson bought a house on
the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike in Concord, Massachusetts,
now open to the public as the Ralph
Waldo Emerson House, and quickly became one of the leading
citizens in the town. He married his
second wife Lydia Jackson of Plymouth, Massachusetts, in Concord
in 1835. He called her Lydian and she
called him Mr. Emerson. Their children were Waldo, Ellen, Edith,
and Edward Waldo Emerson. Ellen was
named for his first wife, at Lydia's suggestion.
Emerson lived a financially
conservative lifestyle. He had inherited some wealth after his wife's death,
though he brought a lawsuit against
the Tucker family in 1836 to get it. He did, however, pay the rent of
his neighbor Bronson Alcott.
Emerson is buried in Sleepy Hollow
Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts
Ralph married (1) Lydia Jackson "Lydian"6 on 14 Sep 1835. Lydia was born on 20 Sep 1802
in Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts. She died on 13 Nov 1892 in Concord,
Middlesex, Massachusetts.
Ralph married (2) Ellen Louisa
Tucker 7 on 30 Sep 1829.
Ellen was born about 1811 in Of Concord, Merrimack, New Hampshire. She died on
8 Feb 1831 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts.
Appendix A - Sources
1. Compiled
by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ancestral File (R) (Compiled by: Family History Library;
FamilySearch; (http://familysearch.org)), Family History Library, 35 North West
Temple Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84150-3440.
2. Alexis
Anderson, World Connect Project pages of Alexis Anderson,
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GED&db=alex1136.
3. n/a,
Compiler: William Addams Reitwiesner, Ancestry of George W. Bush, Location:
n/a, Url: http://www.wargs.com/political/bush.html, retrieved 2 Nov 2007.
4. n/a,
Compiler: William Addams Reitwiesner, Ancestry of George W. Bush, Location:
n/a, Url: http://www.wargs.com/political/bush.html.
5. n/a,
Compiler: William Addams Reitwiesner, Ancestry of George W. Bush, Location:
n/a, Url: http://www.wargs.com/political/bush.html.
6. Compiled
by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ancestral File (R) .
7. Compiled
by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ancestral File (R) .