The Royal Family of Concord: Samuel, Elizabeth, and Rockwood Hoar and Their Friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson

By Paula Ivaska Robbins

The Royal Family of Concord chronicles the lives of the most important family in nineteenth century Concord. Squire Samuel Hoar was a lawyer and congressman; he and his son were founders of the anti-slavery Republican Party in Massachusetts. Rockwood Hoar was a judge, US Attorney General under Grant, and a congressman. His daughter, Elizabeth, was engaged to Charles, the brilliant younger brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who tragically died just before they were to wed. She became the sister, assistant, and muse to Waldo and a close friend of many in the Transcendental circle, especially Margaret Fuller.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 6, 2003
• ISBN: 9781462837885

Paula Ivaska Robbins

Paula Ivaska Robbins is in her fifth career, as a freelance medical editor. After early retirement from a position as a university dean, she led a walking tour from her home in historic Concord, Massachusetts past the homes of the Hoar family and became fascinated by their story. She holds degrees from Vassar College, Boston University, and the University of Connecticut and now lives in Asheville, North Carolina. She is the author of three other books in addition to The Royal Family of Concord: Samuel, Elizabeth, and Rockwood Hoar and Their Friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson: Successful Midlife Career Change (AMACOM, 1978) and two historical novels based on the lives of her Finnish grandmothers.

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Copyright © 2003 by Paula Ivaska Robbins.

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Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FOREWORD

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

The Hoar Family

CHAPTER 2

Marriage and Family

CHAPTER 3

The Religion of the Hoars

CHAPTER 4

Squire Hoar’s Law Practice

CHAPTER 5

Concord Academy; The Education of the Hoars and the Thoreaus

CHAPTER 6

Concord in the 1830s

CHAPTER 7

The Courtship of Elizabeth Hoar and Charles Emerson

CHAPTER 8

Brother and Sister

CHAPTER 9

Waldo’s Menagerie

CHAPTER 10

Transcendental Times

CHAPTER 11

Elizabeth and the Hawthornes

CHAPTER 12

Elizabeth and the Fuller Family

CHAPTER 13

Anti-Slavery in Concord before 1844

CHAPTER 14

1844, The Year That Everything Happened

CHAPTER 15

Charleston

CHAPTER 16

Waldo’s Women

CHAPTER 17

Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, Lawyer and Politician

CHAPTER 18

The Fight against the Slave Power: Conscience Whig to Free-Soil to the Republican Party

CHAPTER 19

Rockwood and Waldo

CHAPTER 20

The Last Years of Samuel Hoar, Son of Harvard

CHAPTER 21

Franklin B. Sanborn

CHAPTER 22

Elizabeth and Edward

CHAPTER 23

The Civil War Years

CHAPTER 24

The Attorney-General

CHAPTER 25

Back Home in Concord

CHAPTER 26

Endings

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTES

To Marcia Brown Stern

Elizabeth Hoar’s description of Margaret Fuller’s friendships

could apply as well to her, ". . . her friends were a necklace of

diamonds about her neck."

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Samuel Hoar’s home   

Concord Center in 1840.

Courtesy Concord Free Public Library   

Eliabeth Sherman Hoar with an unidentified child.

Courtesy Concord Free Public Library    

Bush, the Emerson’s home    

Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar.

Courtesy Concord Free Public Library.    

The Philosopher’s Camp in the Adirondacks.

Courtesy Concord Free Public Library    

Samuel Hoar. Courtesy Concord Free Public Library.   

Ralph Waldo Emerson statue by Daniel Chester French.

Courtesy Concord Free Public Library    

President Grant and his Cabinet in front of E.R. Hoar’s home, April 19, 1876.

Courtesy Concord Free Public Library    

FOREWORD

A study of Elizabeth Sherman Hoar and her family is long overdue. When I was in graduate school, I decided to write my dissertation on the Transcendentalists’ periodical, the Dial, in part because it meant that I could learn about the Concord group that wove itself into and out of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s life. One of the most fascinating of these people was Elizabeth Hoar, but very little work had been done on her, and what was done—as was, regrettably, so typical for scholarship on nineteenth-century women at this time—saw her as part of Emerson’s circle rather than as an individual who was nevertheless part of one of Concord’s most important families.

In 1970, while writing my dissertation, I came across a note in the Thoreau Society Bulletin that Elizabeth Maxfield-Miller of Concord was writing a biography of Elizabeth Hoar. I wrote Mrs. Miller (later to be my friend Betsy) and thus commenced a nearly twenty-year correspondence and the pleasure of publishing her selected edition of Elizabeth’s letters in the annual, Studies in the American Renaissance, which I edited. Betsy, too, recognized Elizabeth’s central role among the Concord group, and she even had her notes organized in colored file folders, with appropriate colors for each person, such as black for Nathaniel Hawthorne, green for Henry David Thoreau, gray for Emerson, and blue for Elizabeth. But Betsy never finished her planned biography of Elizabeth: it fell victim to age and ill-health.

Paula Robbins began by picking up Betsy’s broken task, but wisely decided that Elizabeth’s story could not be told in a vacuum. Just as recent scholarship on Emerson has shown that he must be studied within the context of his family, so too is it necessary to look at all the Hoars in order to understand how each of them was affected by their familial history and relations. Because the Hoar family contributed to so many aspects of American life—politics, law, and civics on both town, state, and national levels—Robbins cast her net widely in an attempt to follow the story of the Hoar family. Fortunately, the last thirty years have seen an explosion in the editing of primary documents, and much material had been made public that bears on the Hoar family. Also, the continued good work of the Special Collections department of the Concord Free Public Library, and its curators Marcia Moss and especially Leslie Perrin Wilson, have resulted in making available many resources for the study of Concord’s history.

This book tells the fascinating story of one of Concord’s most famous and important families. Elizabeth is fully drawn here, but so are her parents and siblings and extended family. Robbins’ excellent archival research has turned up new information about these people, and especially their relations to Concord’s most famous family, the Emersons. Besides bringing Elizabeth to life, Robbins shows us how her father Samuel Hoar was instrumental in helping to set the tone (and divisons) of nineteenth-century Concord, the contributions to the moral character of the family made by her mother Sarah Sherman Hoar, the accomplishments of her brothers Ebenezer Rockwood and George Frisbie Hoar in law and politics, and the friendship of Edward Sherman Hoar with Thoreau. In the tradition of those grand nineteenth-century life and letters volumes, Robbins has let her characters speak for themselves through a judicious yet generous selection of comments drawn from contemporary letters and diaries. The result is a polyvocal history of this great family and especially its intelligent, dedicated, and romantic daughter, who, through her wit, intelligence, and desire to assist others, became as a sister to the Emerson family. Robbins is to be congratulated for her hard work and dedication, without which we would know less about nineteenth-century Concord and its inhabitants.

Joel Myerson

University of South Carolina

Columbia, South Carolina

25 January 2003

PREFACE

I lived in Concord, Massachusetts at two different times for a total time of twenty-two years. My last home there was in part of the 1872 house on Hubbard Street built as a manse for the Trinitarian Congregational Church, ironically, in one of the early subdivisions in which Rockwood Hoar had invested. One cannot live in Concord for very long without developing an interest in local history. In 1991, I found myself the victim of an economic downturn. While I sent out resumes and waited for interviews, I filled up my time by enrolling in an adult education course on How to Be a Concord Guide. At the end of the course, I took the examination and obtained a license as a guide from the Town. I had recently visited Charleston, South Carolina and had taken a walking tour of that delightful city called The Charleston Tea Party Tour. It occurred to me that I might be able to start a business in my own town by doing the same thing. I developed a two-mile Concord Tea Party Tour that took visitors past many of the historic homes, including those of the Hoar family. In my research, I became fascinated with the sad but romantic story of Elizabeth Hoar and visited the sandstone monument at her grave site in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, now unfortunately becoming obliterated. The tour business was lots of fun for several seasons but netted very little cash, and I was forced to sell my home and move to North Carolina to find a job. However, I still continued my interest in nineteenth century Concord.

When I was finally able to retire from full-time employment, I began actively researching Elizabeth’s life. I soon found that it was impossible to tell her story without that of other members of her family, especially her father, Samuel, and also about their context in Concord. Her brother Rockwood was also intimately involved in their story, and only one biography of him had been published, way back in 1911. He was a sufficiently important person in American history to warrant telling of his story as well. I was able to eliminate Frisbie from my story in good conscience because he spent most of his adult life in Worcester or Washington and two good biographies had been written of him in more recent times in addition to his own two-volume autobiography.

As is true for anyone conducting historical research, I have been greatly assisted in my task by the work of many who have gone before me. In particular, I am grateful to Elizabeth Maxfield-Miller, a teacher of French at Concord Academy, who, like me, first became interested in the homes of the Hoars, now used as dormitories by the school, and then became fascinated by Elizabeth’s story. As a result, she did extensive research, tracking down Elizabeth’s correspondence in many libraries all over the United States and in Europe. She wrote a thorough chronology of Elizabeth’s life and correspondence in three articles published in Studies in the American Renaissance. Without her pioneering work I could never have begun to write this book, and I owe her an immense debt of gratitude.

Fortuitously, in 1999, before her death, the late Virginia Hoar Frecha donated an important collection of the Hoar family papers to the Concord Free Public Library. I was able to make extensive use of this material as well as of previously unpublished papers in the Library collection, including microfilm copies of Concord newspapers. During the time of my initial research for my walking tour, the late Marcia Moss, Curator of the Special Collections Library, was extremely helpful. The present Curator, Leslie Perrin Wilson, has more than carried on the tradition established by Mrs. Moss and has helped in many ways, including extensive input into the chapter dealing with the history of the Concord Free Public Library. Both women published valuable articles in The Concord Spectator on lesser known members of the Hoar family that have been very useful. Joyce Woodman was also always ready to be of assistance. The Town of Concord and many of its citizens are to be commended for supporting such a valuable institution as the Concord Free Public Library. Not only does it serve as a wonderful local and school library but is a resource for scholars from all over the world. Its staff and facilities are severely stretched, and I hope that it will be extremely successful in its current campaign for funds for renovation and expansion.

I also conducted research on the Hoar family at other libraries. Nicholas Graham, Reference Librarian, Kate Dubose, Assistant Reference Librarian, and other members of the staff of the Massachusetts Historical Society were very helpful in guiding me through the immense resources of that venerable institution, especially the papers of Senator George Frisbie Hoar, kept in Worcester. I am also grateful to the Houghton Library of Harvard University, to Janice Zwicker of the Waltham Public Library, to Frances O’Donnell, Curator of Archives and Manuscripts, Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard Divinity School, Margaret D. Hrabe of The University of Virginia Library, and to Michael Redmon of the Santa Barbara, California Historical Society.

My association, as both student and instructor, with the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement at the University of North Carolina at Asheville permitted me to make extensive use of the collection of the D. Hiden Ramsey Library there and its network with the libraries of Western Carolina University and Appalachian State University. The librarians behind the desk of the Ramsey Library were unfailingly helpful and cooperative despite the enormous numbers of interlibrary loan books that I ordered over a period of several years. I also team taught a College for Seniors course on Two Perspectives on the Years Leading up to the Civil War: Concord, Massachusetts and Charleston, South Carolina with Bob Hartje, a professional historian of Southern heritage. Our collaboration was very useful, as he gave me innumerable suggestions for further reading, and his lectures gave me further insight into Charleston in the 1840s.

Members of the Thoreau and Emerson Societies were unfailingly helpful and supportive in my work. Prof. Joel Myerson of the University of South Carolina and Prof. Ronald A. Bosco of the State University of New York at Albany were gracious enough to send me the extensive typescripts of the letters of Charles Emerson to Elizabeth Hoar which they were preparing for publication. Prof. Myerson was extremely helpful with advice about potential publishers and also read the entire manuscript, providing many useful suggestions and pointing out several errors. Joan Goodwin, author of The Remarkable Mrs. Ripley: The Life of Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley, was kind enough to read the very rough first draft of my manuscript and made extensive suggestions for improvement, for which I am most grateful. Prof. Len Gougeon of the University of Scranton was also helpful and encouraging, providing me with copies of several of his articles. The Rev. Charles Grady reviewed the chapter on religion in Concord. I also received encouragement and support from Prof. Phyllis Cole, who read an early draft of the manuscript and provided innumerable constructive suggestions as well as much needed encouragement. It was she who suggested that Elizabeth Hoar’s real talent was that nineteenth century woman’s gift of sympathy. Jayne Gordon of the Thoreau Institute provided early encouragement and suggestions. I also received some helpful advice and assistance from the Curator of the First Parish in Concord, Douglas Baker. Most helpful of all has been Prof. Robert A. Gross of William and Mary College, who, himself was working on a book on Concord in this period, The Transcendentalists and Their World, a follow-up to his wonderful earlier work, The Minutemen and Their World. Prof. Gross read the entire manuscript and raised many important questions, encouraging me to follow my own interpretations of what I had found. My friend and neighbor, Jean V. Reese, copy-edited the final manuscript and pointed out a number of inconsistencies and topics that needed more elaboration to be understood by the ordinary reader.

During the course of my research, I made a number of visits to Concord. My friends, Marcia and Ernest Stern, Tedd and Dorothy osgood, and Sally Lewis were always gracious about providing bed, board and transportation, for which I am deeply indebted. My debt to Marcia Stern is acknowledged in the dedication of this book.

Asheville, North Carolina,

January 2003

INTRODUCTION

Tourists visiting the historic and beautiful Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts, 20 miles west of Boston, may notice, just below Authors’ Ridge and the gravestones of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau, an impressive plot surrounded by granite slabs. The monuments inside the enclosure commemorate a family that was known in its time as the Royal Family of Concord. Its influence was such that it prompted Horace Hosmer, a member of one of the old farming families of Concord, to write in 1901, For generations the Concord people had been instructed from the cradle to the grave to fear God and the Hoar family, to be respectable, to vote a straight ticket prepared for them by the Concord Club, and to pay their taxes without question or murmur.¹

In 1899, Edward Everett Hale would write, Concord is now a place of curious interest to travelers, and the stream of intelligent visitors from all parts of the English-speaking world passes through it daily. It has been the home, first of all, of Emerson and then of the poet Channing, of Alcott, of Thoreau, of Hawthorne, known by their writings to almost every one who dabbles in literature. It has been the home of the Hoars, father and sons, honored and valued in government and in law.² Yet, a hundred years later, most residents of Concord honor and revere the memory of the authors but are unaware of the contributions of the Hoars. Ironically, it was Rockwood Hoar, through his support of the establishment of the Concord Free Public Library and the Antiquarian Museum, which later became the Concord Museum, and his lobbying to establish Patriot’s Day as an official Massachusetts holiday, who did more than almost anyone else to make Concord a destination for tourists and literary pilgrims.

The men and women buried in the Hoar family plot were close friends and neighbors of the Concord authors and both influenced and were influenced by them. Elizabeth Hoar, as I will attempt to show, was the principal muse and assistant to Emerson during the period from 1835 to 1848, the years of his greatest creativity. She was also a close friend and confidante of Margaret Fuller and other members of the Transcendental circle. Elizabeth’s father, Samuel, and her brother, Rockwood Hoar, were lawyers and politicians and carried out the anti-slavery sentiments of Emerson and Thoreau on the political stage of Massachusetts and the nation. Why, then, are they forgotten? Why did they, with so much to offer and so many resources, both innate and material, fail to reach the first rank of actors on the nineteenth century stage? Why was Elizabeth not able to break out of the confines of her expected role and attain creative achievements similar to those of another equally brilliant daughter of a Massachusetts squire: Emily Dickinson? Why did both Samuel and Rockwood Hoar serve only one term in Congress? Rockwood was nominated to the United States Supreme Court, where many contemporaries agreed that he would have served brilliantly, but his confirmation was denied by the Senate. Why did he fail to win approval? These and other questions need to be explored.

Death was an ever-constant presence in the life of Ralph Waldo Emerson, as it was for most Americans before the twentieth century, when death became sanitized and hidden from view. The Hoars were Emerson’s constant partners in mourning. Elizabeth shared in Waldo’s grief over the death of his brother, Charles, beloved by both of them. Both had lost their first love to the ravages of consumption; which forged a lifelong bond. After the death from scarlet fever in 1842 of Emerson’s first son, Waldo, who adored his Aunt Lizzie, he announced his son’s death with this brief note to Elizabeth Hoar, who was staying downstairs. Dear Elizabeth Everyone wakes this morning but my darling Boy. I hope you are better & can come & see us. But your boy you shall not see.³

When he showed the body of his dead son to Rockwood Hoar, Emerson could only murmur to his friend, That boy, that boy.⁴ Emerson’s mother died in Elizabeth’s arms, and he himself gave Rockwood a final embrace on the day before his own death. And it was Rockwood Hoar who delivered one of the eulogies at Emerson’s funeral service in the First Parish of Concord, an institution that was such an important part of both of their lives. Rockwood was also one of the last Concord neighbors to visit Henry Thoreau before his death from tuberculosis, presenting him with a bouquet of the first spring hyacinths the morning that he died.⁵

Emerson chose to live and work in Concord because it was the home of his ancestors, one of whom was a founder of the town in 1635. Here he had status, social standing, and friendship among the town’s elite: the Hoars, the Brookses, and the Keyes. Despite his failure at the parish ministry and his ostracism by the conservative Unitarian establishment after he criticized them in his Divinity School address, he found respect, support, and friendship in Concord. He had good reason to turn down George Ripley’s request that he join the experimental community of Brook Farm. As he wrote, I am in many respects suitably placed in an agreeable neighborhood, in a town which I have many reasons to love & which has respected my freedom so far that I may presume it will indulge me farther if I need it. Here I have friends & kindred. Here I have builded & planted: & here I have greater facilities to prosecute such practical enterprizes as I may cherish, than I could probably find by any removal.⁶

Historians of ideas have often been curious as to why leaders, intellectuals, and artists come to flourish in certain places and certain times in history. They have found that a certain degree of order and prosperity must be in place to free up such thinkers and creators from the humdrum activities of daily life. Cornel West has expressed this well in another context.

Quality leadership is neither the product of one great individual nor the result of odd historical accidents. Rather, it comes from deeply bred traditions and communities that shape and mold talented and gifted persons. Without a vibrant tradition of resistance passed on to new generations, there can be no nurturing of a collective and critical consciousness—only professional conscientiousness survives. Where there is no vital community to hold up precious ethical and religious ideals, there can be no coming to a moral commitment—only personal accomplishment is applauded. Without a credible sense of political struggle, there can be no shouldering of a courageous engagement—only cautious adjustment is undertaken.⁷

It was the members of the Hoar family and others like them who created the stability and structure—the town meeting, the schools, the churches, the lectures given at the Lyceum, the Library, and the courts—as well as the wealth that enabled Ralph Waldo Emerson and his circle to create what has been termed the American Renaissance. Thus, to fully understand the work of these authors, so influential in the development of an American literature, it is also necessary to understand those people who created the environment in which the Concord authors could flourish.

Recent critics have emphasized the individualism of Emerson and Thoreau and have used their writings to justify their own rebellions against society. I, however, along with Len Gougeon and Richard Teichgraeber, believe that Emerson and Thoreau were very much connected critics of American society, that is, one who utilizes existing norms and shared values as the grounds for moral and social criticism.⁸ Teichgraeber sees . . . the conscious efforts each made to maintain moral ties with the society they criticized, yet of which they also thought themselves to be members.⁹ Both Emerson and Thoreau were active in the Concord Lyceum, Thoreau as curator, lining up speakers, and Emerson served on innumerable town committees and organizations. As I will attempt to show, Emerson’s writings do not necessarily reflect the more conventional and conservative way in which he led his life. He shared many of the values of Samuel Hoar and his children, Elizabeth and Rockwood, who numbered among Waldo Emerson’s closest friends.

The Hoar family was the culmination of the pure type of the New England Puritan, characterized by devotion to hard work, to duty, to God, and to morality. Although such men and women have long since vanished, their Puritan work ethic remains as a strain in the national psyche.

A further reason for writing about the Hoar family is that they were involved in so many of the dramatic stories of American history. Episodes from their lives compete with those of novels for romance and drama. Theirs is a story worth telling.

CHAPTER 1

The Hoar Family

The Hoar family is an old and notable one, and their ancestors were people of accomplishment. Joanna Hinksman Hoar, widowed in 1638 by the death of her husband, Charles Hoare, Jr., Sheriff of Gloucester, England, decided to come with five of her six children to New England, arriving in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1640.¹ In 1894, Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar accompanied a $5,000 donation for the establishment of a scholarship at Radcliffe College in honor of Joanna Hoar, with a purported copy of a letter sent by her to Lady Radcliffe. It said,

We were of the people called by their revilers Puritans, to whom civil liberty, sound learning and religion were very dear. The times were troublous in England and the hands of princes and prelates were heavy upon God’s people. My thoughts were turned to the new England, where precious Mr. John Harvard had just lighted that little candle which has since thrown its beams so far, where there seemed a providential refuge for those who desired a church without a bishop, and a state without a king. I did not, therefore, like the worshipful Lady Radcliffe, send a contribution in money, but I came hither myself, bringing the five youngest of my children with me, and arrived at Braintree in the year 1640."²

The two daughters of Joanna Hoar married Henry Flint and Edmund Quincy, and from these unions came the sources of the Adams and Quincy families. Her youngest son, Leonard Hoar, was educated at Harvard College and returned to England, where he married Bridget Lisle, daughter of a regicide who had condemned Charles I to death. He became the minister of the parish of Wanstead in Essex, but at the Restoration of the monarchy, he lost his parish and began to study medicine at Cambridge. Leonard Hoar returned to New England in 1672 to assume the presidency of Harvard College, but he resigned in 1675 because of controversy caused by an unsuccessful candidate for the position. He died a year later.³

Joanna’s second eldest son, John Hoar, a lawyer, settled first in Scituate, then in Concord, where he lived in a house that A. Bronson Alcott and his family later lived in and called Orchard House.⁴ In 1676, John Hoar negotiated with a band of Indians who had captured some white settlers. He was able to arrange for a trade of money and goods for the wife of the Reverend Joseph Rowlandson, minister of Lancaster, at a place that was later named Redemption Rock.⁵ John Hoar was known for his humane and brave conduct in sheltering and protecting the poor group of Praying Indians during King Philip’s War, although his actions caused a furor among his fellow townsmen.⁶

Concord was the first inland town in Massachusetts, settled in 1635 by a small band of Puritans led by the Revs. John Jones and Peter Bulkeley. The town is situated where the swifter Assabet River joins the Sudbury to form the Concord River, which flows north to the Merrimack and thence to the sea. It had been the site of a sizable Indian village before the English settled New England. They called the river Musketaquid, and they rowed their dugout canoes in it, caught alewives and other fish in a weir constructed across a tributary brook, and farmed along its banks. The land was cleared and available to the small band of Puritan settlers because the smallpox that the Europeans had brought with them killed most of the former Indian inhabitants, who had no immunity to the disease.

Concord was the point of a natural crossroad for travelers from the west and north going to Boston, who had to use the bridges there to cross over the rivers, and the town became, even as early as the late seventeenth century, a center of trade. It became the shire town and seat of one of the courts of Middlesex County and was used as a capital for the provincial government and the temporary location of Harvard College during the Revolution. In the early days of the new republic, Concord citizens had even hoped that the town might be chosen as the capital of the Commonwealth and the only governmental center of Middlesex County.⁷ other members of the Hoar family eventually lived in Concord and in the surrounding towns of Lincoln, Lexington, Waltham, and Watertown, within a circle of six miles’ radius. John Hoar’s grandson, Samuel Hoar, was a lieutenant of the Lincoln Company at Concord Bridge on April 19, 1775; five other Hoar relatives fought there as well.⁸ He later served in the Provincial and Continental forces and fought at Saratoga. After the Revolution ended, he served in the Massachusetts legislature, first as a representative and later as a senator.⁹ That first Squire Samuel Hoar married Susannah Pierce, daughter of Colonel Abijah Pierce, a colonel of a regiment of Minutemen from Lincoln. Her third child and first son, also named Samuel, was born May 18, 1778.¹⁰ Unlike his Federalist son, the first Samuel Hoar was a Jeffersonian Democrat. He lived to be eighty-nine years of age, dying in 1832.¹¹ Samuel Hoar, Jr. worked on his father’s farm until he was twenty years of age. As was the custom, the Rev. Charles Stearns, the minister in Lincoln, tutored Samuel to prepare him for entrance into Harvard College. He earned his college expenses by teaching school during the winter months and was graduated in 1802.¹² His classmates at Harvard called him Cato, likening him to a fine old Roman senator because of his height, which was six feet three inches, and erect carriage.¹³ Immediately after graduation, Hoar spent two years as a tutor for the sons of Colonel Tayloe, who owned a huge plantation at Mt. Airy, Virginia, near Richmond. A letter from Hoar to his cousin and classmate, John Farrar, provides a description of his life there. His duties as a tutor were not overly demanding. I spend my time on the whole quite agreeably. I have never more than five pupils. These do not occupy nearly all my time. The rest is spent, principally in reading, eating & sleeping.¹⁴

On my arrival at my destined abode in Virginia, I found a most elegant house, polite inhabitants, spacious & tarty gardens & greenhouse, with every other convenience & harmony that riches can provide. These are attended with one inconvenience viz. want of social neighborhood. Not more than one family, within ten miles, associate with the Tayloes. During my continuance there, my principal companions were books. of these I formed an excellent library. But of these, you know, a person may be weary . . . ¹⁵

Throughout his life, Hoar was a most loyal and dedicated son of Harvard, and, in the letter, he expressed his wistfulness in reminiscing about his college days and the friendships he made there. As on leaving college we cannot continue with our old friends, whether we remove to a great or small distance, is immaterial. I believe no person, to whom college life appears as it does to us, can change it for one more agreeable. Still, even while there, something is wanting to happiness. There I think, that with the company of half a dozen jovial sons of Harvard, I should be at the achme of human happiness.¹⁶

The weeks spent in the isolation of plantation life were, fortunately, alternated with time spent in the federal capital. In the same letter, dated from Washington City, 12 February, 1803, Hoar wrote that he stayed in Virginia only a month before moving to the city. I live about a mile from the Capitol, & sometimes attend the debates of Congress. I have frequently had the pleasure of dining with the most distinguished members of both houses. You will justly conclude, that I sat silent & attentive. He described a number of the political figures that he met; his opinion of Jefferson was negative, as would be expected from the staunch Federalist that he had become, despite his father’s Democratic leanings.

Hoar described the formality of social life in the capitol and the tedium of in one hand hold the tea cup, & between the thumb & fore finger of the other nip a cracker. There is company enough, but not for me; for tho I have been introduced to 500 at least, yet I am scarcely acquainted with one. They are generally so guarded by ceremony, that approach is difficult. ¹⁷

After two years with the Tayloes, Samuel returned to Massachusetts and studied law with Artemas Ward in Charlestown. He was admitted to the bar in September, 1805 and moved to Concord to establish a practice of law.¹⁸ In 1807, he qualified for the lowest rung on the legal ladder: attorney at the Court of Common Pleas, licensed to litigate disputes over debt. After three years of further preparation, he rose to become a full-fledged attorney at the Supreme Judicial Court in 1810. The following year, at the age of 33, he was named a justice of the peace, entitled to bear the honorific of Squire, by which title he was known the rest of his life.¹⁹ Samuel Hoar was offered the professorship in mathematics at Harvard in 1806. According to Emerson, It was rather his reputation for severe method in his intellect, than any special direction in his studies, that caused this offer. Because he was already established in the legal profession, Hoar declined the offer.²⁰

Hoar’s first office was a miserable little shack beneath the ridge across from the First Parish church on the road to Cambridge, between two of the oldest houses in Concord, those of Reuben Brown and Jonathan Fay. His response to the Concord selectmen, when asked to describe his property for the purposes of assessment, was the following poem:

Between Elm Wood and Button Row

A line of scraggy poplars grow;

Behind these poplars may be seen

My worn-out office—painted green.²¹

CHAPTER 2

Marriage and Family

On October 13, 1812, the 34-year-old Samuel Hoar married Sarah Sherman of New Haven, Connecticut, the youngest daughter of Roger Sherman, who had died when she was 10 years old.¹ Their union joined an already distinguished Massachusetts family with an even more illustrious one from Connecticut that was to produce many important nineteenth century legal and political figures.

Roger Sherman was born on April 19, 1721 in Newton, Massachusetts. He served for several terms in the Connecticut legislature between 1755 and 1766, was judge of the Superior Court (1766-85), and mayor of New Haven (1784-93). Although a staunch conservative, he was an early supporter of American independence from Britain. As a delegate to the Second Continental Congress at Philadelphia, he signed the Declaration of Independence and helped draft the Articles of Confederation.

Sherman’s greatest service was rendered at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, where his plan for representation of large and small states prevented a deadlock. A critical difference appeared between larger states advocating congressional representation on the basis of population and smaller states desiring equal representation regardless of size. Sherman promoted what came to be known as the Connecticut (or Great) Compromise, providing for a bicameral legislature that uses a dual system of representation. His plan helped save the convention from disintegrating and established the basis of the present system of federal government in the United States.

Sherman served in Congress under the new Constitution, first as a representative (1789-91) and then as a senator from 1791 until his death in New Haven on July 23, 1793. He supported Alexander Hamilton’s program for assumption of state debts, establishment of a national bank, and enactment of a tariff.

Through her Sherman family, Sarah Sherman Hoar was closely related to many men who became eminent lawyers. Her brother-in-law, Judge Simeon Baldwin, was a Judge of the Connecticut Supreme Court. Her cousin, Roger Minott Sherman, was considered to be one of the ablest lawyers in New England. Among her nephews were Roger Sherman Baldwin, who became the head of the Connecticut Bar, and William M. Evarts, who served as Attorney-General under President Johnson and Secretary of State under President Hayes.²

Sarah grew up in her widowed mother’s house opposite the campus of Yale College, where John C. Calhoun was a frequent visitor; he became her lifelong admirer.³ As a young girl in New Haven, Sarah Sherman and two of her friends, daughters of Chief Justice oliver Ellsworth and Senator James Hillhouse, started a school for Negro children at a time when it was still illegal there to teach a black person to read and write. The New Haven authorities threatened them with prosecution despite their age and social status, but they insisted that they were performing a religious duty by teaching little children to read the Bible. Public opinion supported their effort, and President Dwight of Yale raised funds for support of the school, which continued for many years.⁴

Sarah had some Concord connections because her maternal grandmother had been Rebecca Minot of Concord, and a maternal uncle had married Rebecca Barrett of Concord. Her uncle, Nathaniel Sherman, had been the minister of the church in the adjoining town of Bedford at the time that William Emerson became the minister of the First Parish in Concord.⁵

Born in 1783,⁶ Sarah was 29 years of age at the time of her courtship with Samuel Hoar, well beyond the usual age of marriage in those days. As the youngest daughter, she was responsible for the care of her mother, who was in poor health. The correspondence of Sarah Sherman and Samuel Hoar in the months before their marriage is preserved in Senator George Frisbie Hoar’s papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The first, from Samuel to Sarah, is dated from Concord, May 26, 1812, and is a carefully worded letter clearly concerned with maintaining proprieties. It was addressed to her brother to avoid the possibility that the wrong person might read the contents. Samuel writes of the weather and the latest news of Concord folk whom Sarah had met during a visit to Concord and inquires about her trip back to New Haven from Charlestown and after the health of her mother. He describes his own situation in the following words, mentioning court dates in Concord and Boston as well.

I shall hope to escape the charge of egotism from you, if I mention my own occupation. In the morning I ramble a mile or two, then attend to the vastly important affair of collecting some two dollar debts; then attend to some books, which I suppose would not be considered by you very interesting. In the evening I sometimes visit neighbors, or they call on me at my office. This, with looking very wise & grave, when people call for advice, which is now very seldom, is the usual routine of my visible employment. There is one subject however, which forcibly attracts my attention. This I need not mention.

He ends by asking her to write to him and closes, You need no further assurances that I am sincerely & affectionately yours.⁷ Sarah’s response from New Haven, May 30, 1812, is rather noncommittal, describing her trip from Charlestown, Massachusetts, where she and her mother had stayed with her sister and her husband, Jeremiah Evarts. Their long journey over muddy roads took them in daily stages to Framingham, then Worcester, where they were detained by rain, and thence to Tolland, Connecticut. She wrote, "On Saturday morning we left Tolland.—The day was delightful, the sun shone bright, & the air was mild & pleasant—as we approached Connecticut