MR. MINOT PRATT AND MRS. MARIA JONES BRIDGE PRATT Henry lived in a lofty way. I loved to hear him talk, but I did not like his books so well, though I often read them and took what I liked. They do not do him justice. I liked to see Thoreau rather in his life. Yes, he was religious; he was more like the ministers than others; that is, like what they would wish and try to be. I loved him, but ... always felt a little in awe of him. He loved to talk, like all his family, but not to gossip: he kept the talk on a high plane. He was cheerful and pleasant. — Mrs. Maria Jones Bridge Pratt The farmer and printer Minot Pratt was the “other grandfather” of the little men in Louisa May Alcott’s LITTLE MEN. Later in life his hobby would become the inosculation of foreign plants into the Concord ecosystem, which is not nowadays an innocent activity, nor was it then benign activity. (It was he who introduced what he referred to as the “Chinese chestnut,” the water caltrop or water chestnut Trapa natans, which now seriously endangers many other species; Thoreau had no opportunity to correct him in this hobby, for Pratt would not begin it until 1869).1 DISAMBIGUATION: This Mr. Minot Pratt and Mrs. Maria Jones Bridge Pratt are evidently a very different couple from the Mr. and Mrs. Minot Pratt who contemporaneously were living, all of their lives, in Cohasset, Massachusetts: February 5, 1808: That Minot Pratt was born in Cohasset MA. (But our Mr. Minot Pratt was already born in 1805 in Weymouth.) September 19, 1820: Lillis Joy (Pratt) was born in Cohasset MA. April 3, 1842: Lillis Joy and Minot Pratt, the son of John Pratt, were wed in Cohasset, Massachusetts. June 1, 1872: Minot Pratt died in Cohasset, Massachusetts. (But our Minot Pratt did not die until 1878.) November 25, 1879: Lillis Joy Pratt died in Cohasset, Massachusetts. 1. On the grateful side, it wasn’t Minot Pratt who unleashed gypsy moths into this continent in 1866 — that was another misguided soul living in the vicinity of Concord. HDT WHAT? INDEX MINOT PRATT MRS. MARIA JONES BRIDGE PRATT 1805 January 8, Tuesday: Eraldo ed Emma, a dramma eroico per musica by Simon Mayr to words of Rossi, was performed for the initial time, in the Teatro alla Scala, Milan. Minot Pratt was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts to Bela Pratt and Sophia Pratt. HDT WHAT? INDEX MINOT PRATT MRS. MARIA JONES BRIDGE PRATT 1806 March 27, Thursday: Maria Jones Bridge was born in Boston to John Bridge and Rebecca Beal Bridge. HDT WHAT? INDEX MINOT PRATT MRS. MARIA JONES BRIDGE PRATT 1822 At about the age of 17 Minot Pratt, who had put to learn stone-cutting, went to New Bedford, Massachusetts to become a printer’s apprentice at the Mercury. Although there is no known image of him, he would be described in Lindsay Swift’s 1900 BROOK FARM as “one of the most conspicuously attractive inhabitants [of Brook Farm] … large and of fine physique, with strong features, and a modest but dignified mien.” The recorded Quaker minister Mary Newhall, and friends Elizabeth Redman and Mary Rotch, were in the process of being disowned by the New Bedford Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, for their espousal of what were termed “advanced doctrines.” Read about this “New Light” controversy: THE “NEW LIGHTS” Read about the impact this controversy would have on Waldo Emerson (according to his own evaluation): FREDERICK B. TOLLES About 35 of these “New Lights” were being disowned in Lynn,2 and almost that many in nearby Salem. Micah Ruggles and Lydia Dean were involved in this set of beliefs. ELIAS HICKS “Our hearts are filled with many guests — many beloveds.” 2. Lynn (maybe it was yet called Lynnfield) was less than an hour’s travel from Boston. From Burrill’s Hill there you can see the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House. HDT WHAT? INDEX MINOT PRATT MRS. MARIA JONES BRIDGE PRATT Quaker Meeting for Worship Note that Thoreau and Emerson scholars, to date, have taken a simplistic attitude toward this history, presuming for one thing that in the Friendly struggle between Hicksites and Evangelicals, it was always the Hicksites who were disowned and the Evangelicals who stayed in possession of the Quaker logo when that is utterly inaccurate, and presuming, for another thing, that whenever there was a struggle with the Evangelicals in the Friends groups, those who were in opposition were Hicksites or Hicksite sympathizers when that is utterly simplistic. For instance, the “New Light” movement of Mary Newhall that began in about 1815 had not more sympathy for Hicksites than for Evangelicals, was affiliated with the “Irish Liberals,” and was a parallel within Quakerism of the group within the Congregational Church which had eventually split off as Unitarians. (The payoff for these simplistic attitudes is that the scholars get to pretend that the Hicksites were merely Unitarian-symps within Quaker groups, and thus dismiss the fundamental difference between the sort of “reformer” who goes for religious closure, like the Reverend Ralph Waldo Emerson or the Reverend Frederic Henry Hedge or Martin Luther, but merely for closure of a different stamp, and the sort of religious reformer, like Henry Thoreau or Elias Hicks or George Fox, who seeks to forestall any religious closure.) Mary Newhall, Elizabeth Redman, and Mary Rotch, reformers of the “closure-seeking” variety and deadly opponents of the Hicksites (of whom they had no comprehension, because they did not know what it was to seek “non-closure” in matters of the spirit) as well as of the Evangelicals (in opposition to whom they defined themselves), became Unitarians and became friends (small f) of Ralph Waldo Emerson. To characterize their belief system, the historian has to explain that these “New Lights” opposed the Evangelicals within Quakerism who were tending to oversimplify the spiritual life by an escapism in which the old was automatically better than the new, the past better than the present, their model of religious doctrine being one of gradual deterioration with time, and has also to explain that what they had to offer in the place of these simplicitudes was merely an equal but opposite oversimplicitism according to which the new is automatically better than the old, because bright and new, and the future better than the present because after the present. Their simplistic model of religious doctrine was one of progressive revelation with time — a doctrine of evolutionary progress in religious attitudes similar to the sophomoronic attitude that a few deities are obviously better than a confused pagan mess of them, and one monotheistic deity obviously superior to a few (and no deity superior to one). What these people had to offer reduced to the message “Oh, that’s old- fashioned now,” if one allows that they did deliver this doctrine with some wit and subtlety. HDT WHAT? INDEX MINOT PRATT MRS. MARIA JONES BRIDGE PRATT Friend Elias was responsive to the tribulation of these disowned Friends, but his basic attitude had already been expressed in a letter to Martha Aldrich on May 29, 1801: neither memories of the past nor anticipations of the future should be allowed to distract us from the seriousness of our task of using “our own experience and judgment” in “living our daily experience in that injunction of our dear Lord.” ELIAS HICKS “The candle could not be often put out, unless it was also often lighted, which shows the mercy of God.” Is it any wonder that this was the year in which Friend Elias had his first heart attack? HDT WHAT? INDEX MINOT PRATT MRS. MARIA JONES BRIDGE PRATT 1829 March 22, Sunday: By this point Minot Pratt was at work as a printer in Boston. He and Maria Jones were married by Ralph Waldo Emerson at his 2d Unitarian Church on Hanover Street in the North End (and quite possibly this was the 1st couple the young Reverend Emerson united in matrimony).3 According to an almanac of the period, “Protocol agreed on between the plenipotentiaries of Great Britain, France, and Russia; fixing the government, boundaries, &c. of Greece.” CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS By this “London Protocol” setting the borders of Greece under a Christian ruler subject to the control of the Ottoman Empire, Greece, Romania, and Serbia achieved a measure of independence from Turkey. 3. They would have 4 sons one of whom, John Bridge Pratt, would become an insurance man and marry an Alcott daughter, Anna “Meg” Bronson Alcott (the other sons would be Henry Minot Pratt, Frederick Grey Pratt, and Theodore Parker Pratt; this couple would also produce a daughter, Caroline Hayden Pratt). Their two grandsons by John and Anna, Frederick Alcott Pratt and John Sewall Pratt, would be the “little men” of Louisa May Alcott’s LITTLE MEN, designated in the book as “John Brooke” and “Thomas Bangs” [need to verify this]. HDT WHAT? INDEX MINOT PRATT MRS. MARIA JONES BRIDGE PRATT 1841 September: This was the Brook Farm experiment’s membership roster as it has been derived from their Articles of Association documents dated September 29, 1841 and February 17, 1842, from their Constitution dated February 11, 1844, and from various minutes of their meetings preserved by the Massachusetts Historical Society. We instantly notice that it is not a particularly accurate record of what had been going on, as witness the fact that Nathaniel Hawthorne is being shown as being admitted to membership in the association a month after his attorney has filed the necessary legal papers to disassociate him: Date of Name Birthplace Birthdate Occupation Admission September 1841 Reverend George Ripley Greenfield MA 1802 minister September 1841 Mrs.