THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD:HORACE RICE HOSMER HORACE RICE HOSMER Horace Rice Hosmer, store clerk, inventor, pencil maker and salesman, painter, handyman, farmer, son of Joseph Hosmer (1735- 1821) and brother of Joseph Hosmer, Jr., the abolitionist, a schoolmate of the Thoreau brothers, whose farm a mile and a half north of Concord was used in the Underground Railroad. Young Horace himself attended the Concord Academy, where he was tutored by John Thoreau, Jr. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: HORACE RICE HOSMER 1635 According to a still-extant fragment from the earliest Concord records, it was “Ordered that the meeting-house stande on the hill near the brook on the easte of Goodman Judgson’s lott.” Public Buildings — Meeting-houses. — To provide suitable accommodations for public religious worship, was one of the first acts of the town after its incorporation. And hence we find it recorded in a fragment of the proceedings of the town in 1635 — “Ordered that the meeting-house stande on the hill near the brook on the easte of Goodman Judgson’s lott.” Tradition informs us, that this was on the hill some distance easterly from the common. This house served as a place of worship about 30 years. ... A town bell was procured very early, but at what time does not appear. At first it was hung on a tree, and its tones are said to have been terrible to the neighboring Indians. About 1696 it was broken, and sent to England to be recast. In 1700 it was “hanged on the meeting-house in the turret,” where it remained till the court-house was built, on which it was placed til 1791, when it was removed to the meeting- house. A new bell was procured, in 1784, from Hanover, weighing 500 lbs., but being broken, another was ordered from England in 1789, which continued till 1826, when the present one, weighing 1572 lbs., was obtained.1 1. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: HORACE RICE HOSMER The Hosmer family, originating in Kent County, England, acquired one square mile of land in Concord. The Hosmer Home James Hosmer (1) of Concord, born 1605, came in the Elizabeth from London during 1635 with his wife Ann, 27 year of age, and their daughters Mary, 2, and Ann, 3 months, and 2 maidservants. He had been of Hawkhurst, in County Kent; he had here James Hosmer (2), born during 1637; John Hosmer, born during 1639; another daughter Mary, born on January 10th, 1641, who died August 18th, 1642, and the wife, another wife named Mary, had died on May 11th, 1641. Soon he had yet another wife, in the record called Alice, by whom was born Stephen Hosmer (1), born on November 27th, 1642; Hannah Hosmer, born during 1644, and Mary Hosmer, born during 1646; and then another wife named Mary, although in another place this wife is said to be named Ellen. She died on March 3d, 1665. He was a freeman on May 17th, 1657, and died on February 7th, 1685. His daughter Mary Hosmer got married with Thomas Smith of Concord; and Hannah Hosmer got married on October 26th, 1665 with Joseph Hayward. Hosmer Houses in Concord • 41 Lowell Road: The Nathan Hosmer House built in 1828 when he married Sophia Wheeler. Deeded to his son, Herbert whose brother, Alfred (Fred) Hosmer took numerous pictures of Concord at the turn of the 19th century. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: HORACE RICE HOSMER • 320 Lowell Road: The Hunt--Hosmer house — In 1852, Edmund Hosmer, the “poetical farmer” friend of Emerson and Thoreau, moved here from his farm on Sandy Pond Road. There is a story about Edmund’s 2 daughters and their successful efforts to stop the town from chopping down 2 trees in front of the property. • 572 Main Street: The Joseph Hosmer House (Joseph was the cabinetmaker and was at the North Bridge on April 19, 1775). • 1361 Sudbury Road: The Nathanial Hosmer house was built approximately at the time of his marriage to Lucy Meriam. • 25 Old Marlboro Road: John Hosmer built this around 1789, adjacent to his large farm. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: HORACE RICE HOSMER 1787 In this year, at the age of 40, Thomas Dugan ran away from a white man named either “Whittaker Ward” or “Solomon Ward,” on the James River, a man who evidently was still supposing that human beings could own other human beings. Here is a “PRAYER for a Negroe”: SLAVERY O Thou great God, the Maker and Lord of all creatures, I, a poor sinner, black in body, and still blacker in sin, would humbly try to worship thee, and glorify thy name, that I am allowed to pray to thee.... Lord give me grace to love thee, and thy dear Son, and thy blessed ways, and thy holy law, and to love all that love God, and make the land of my slavery, the place of my true freedom. Lord, pity poor Negroes, that are living without God in the world, and turn and convert them to thee. Bless my master, and all that are his. Make me a faithful servant; and teach me to remember, that what good thing soever any man doth; the same shall he receive of the lord, whether he be bound or free.... Amen. This fugitive from Virginia human possessiveness would eventually wind up in the vicinity of Walden Pond, where in this year John Wyman or Wayman was building a home and pottery manufactory just where there is now the regraded entrance to the State Reservation parking lot. This land at the northeast end of the pond was at the time owned by Dr. Abel Prescott, so very clearly he would have been “squatting with permission.” Henry Thoreau eventually would be talking to John Wyman or Wayman’s son Tommy the potter (Thomas Wyman, see journal entry for June 16, 1853) WALDEN: An old man, a potter, who lived by the pond before the PEOPLE OF Revolution, told him once that there was an iron chest at the WALDEN bottom, and that he had seen it. Sometimes it would come floating up to the shore; but when you went toward it, it would go back into deep water and disappear. I was pleased to hear of the old log canoe, which took the place of an Indian one of the same material but more graceful construction, which perchance had first been a tree on the bank, and then, as it were, fell into the water, to float there for a generation, the most proper vessel for the lake. I remember that when I first looked into these depths there were many large trunks to be seen indistinctly lying on the bottom, which had either been blown over formerly, or left on the ice at the last cutting, when wood was cheaper; but now they have mostly disappeared. JOHN WYMAN HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: HORACE RICE HOSMER Horace Rice Hosmer would report that Dugan, who was known sometimes in Concord as “Ward” after his owner in Virginia, indicated that he had been riding behind his slavemaster father to cut grass on a meadow of the James or Jameses River, carrying a scythe, and had been attempting to get this scythe to catch on a limb of a tree or a bush so he would be able to jerk it and kill Whittaker with an apparently accidental blow (the only Solomon Ward we have been able to identify in Virginia was but 12 years old at this time, and thus could not have been the 40-year-old mulatto slave’s father, and there had been no Solomon Ward in the previous generation of that family; we have not been able to locate anyone at all of the name “Whittaker”). But this did not come off so Thomas waited for an opportunity that day around noon and swam the river and headed for the North, assuming the name Thomas Dugan. (Horace’s father Joseph Hosmer was another of these field workers for Cyrus Hosmer, working alongside Dugan, so perhaps Horace had heard this story secondhand, by way of his father Joseph.) Dugan would make, according to himself, the 1st grain cradle in Concord. Dugan did, according to himself, some of the 1st fruit-tree grafting in Concord. Dugan worked for his board plus $0.25 a day, or more, at day work. He had a long-term basic understanding with Cyrus Hosmer, worked for him by preference in return for some security during slack periods. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: HORACE RICE HOSMER 1814 September 28, Wednesday: In Concord, Massachusetts, “[30] Joseph Hosmer, son of Joseph Hosmer, 2d & Lydia his wife was born Sept. 28, 1814” CONCORD TOWN RECORDS He would be the elder brother of Horace Rice Hosmer and a schoolmate of the Thoreau brothers. He would become a cordwainer (shoemaker). “Thoreau was an enigma to all of us. No one could place him.” — Joseph Hosmer HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: HORACE RICE HOSMER 1816 April 3, Wednesday: In Concord, Massachusetts, “Benjamin-Gardner Hosmer, son of Joseph Hosmer, 2d & Lydia his wife was born April 3d, 1816.” CONCORD TOWN RECORDS This was the 2d Hosmer son, “Benj.” He, as well as his older brother Joseph Hosmer, Jr., would be a schoolmate of the Thoreau brothers.