Manuscript Land Survey
A Tract of Woodland described as follows....
- Massachusetts, 1850
Massachusetts, 1850. A Tract of Woodland described as follows...." Massachusetts: 1850.
Full Description:
THOREAU, Henry David. Manuscript Land Survey. "A Tract of Woodland described as follows...." Massachusetts: 1850.
A rare manuscript land survey in Thoreau's hand. Survey of a tract of land very near Walden Pond, and next to a house belonging to Ralph Waldo Emerson, which is a stones throw to Walden Pond. Half-sheet (7 5/8 x 5 3/4 inches; 195 x 145 mm). With sixteen lines of text, written in brown ink on recto of sheet. Verso blank. Two horizontal creases. A few splits along creases, but with no loss of text. Some ink smudges. Overall a very good example of Thoreau's work as a surveyor in his own hand.
Survey reads: "A Tract of Woodland, described as follows, viz: Beginning at the north-west corner at a stake and stone, on the Lincoln Road, thence N521/2 E35 rods 14 links, by land of Geo. Everett, with a stake and stone in the middle of Saw Mill Brook; south-easterly by middle of said Brook, or land of R. W. Emerson, and land of Cyrus Smith, about 6 rods to a point opposite with a stake and stones; N 77 7/8 W 72 rods 3 links by land of Cyrus Stow with a stake and stones by Lincoln Road; and by said road [?] bound first mentioned."
"Henry David Thoreau, one of America's most prominent environmental writers, supported himself as a land surveyor for much of his life, parceling land that would be sold off to loggers." (Patrick Chura- "Thoreau The Land Surveyor"). One of his best known surveys was of Walden Pond in 1846, which was included in his book Walden (1854.)
Henry David Thoreau was an American philosopher, poet, environmental scientist, and political activist whose major work, Walden, draws upon each of these various identities in meditating upon the concrete problems of living in the world as a human being... Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817 and died there in 1862, at the age of forty-four. Like that of his contemporary Søren Kierkegaard, Thoreau's intellectual career unfolded in a close and polemical relation to the town in which he spent almost his entire life. After graduating from Harvard in 1837, he struck up a friendship with fellow Concord resident Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essay "Nature" he had first encountered earlier that year... He lived a simple and relatively quiet life, making his living briefly as a teacher and pencil maker but mostly as a land surveyor. " (Stanford).
HBS 69411.
$12,500.
Full Description:
THOREAU, Henry David. Manuscript Land Survey. "A Tract of Woodland described as follows...." Massachusetts: 1850.
A rare manuscript land survey in Thoreau's hand. Survey of a tract of land very near Walden Pond, and next to a house belonging to Ralph Waldo Emerson, which is a stones throw to Walden Pond. Half-sheet (7 5/8 x 5 3/4 inches; 195 x 145 mm). With sixteen lines of text, written in brown ink on recto of sheet. Verso blank. Two horizontal creases. A few splits along creases, but with no loss of text. Some ink smudges. Overall a very good example of Thoreau's work as a surveyor in his own hand.
Survey reads: "A Tract of Woodland, described as follows, viz: Beginning at the north-west corner at a stake and stone, on the Lincoln Road, thence N521/2 E35 rods 14 links, by land of Geo. Everett, with a stake and stone in the middle of Saw Mill Brook; south-easterly by middle of said Brook, or land of R. W. Emerson, and land of Cyrus Smith, about 6 rods to a point opposite with a stake and stones; N 77 7/8 W 72 rods 3 links by land of Cyrus Stow with a stake and stones by Lincoln Road; and by said road [?] bound first mentioned."
"Henry David Thoreau, one of America's most prominent environmental writers, supported himself as a land surveyor for much of his life, parceling land that would be sold off to loggers." (Patrick Chura- "Thoreau The Land Surveyor"). One of his best known surveys was of Walden Pond in 1846, which was included in his book Walden (1854.)
Henry David Thoreau was an American philosopher, poet, environmental scientist, and political activist whose major work, Walden, draws upon each of these various identities in meditating upon the concrete problems of living in the world as a human being... Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817 and died there in 1862, at the age of forty-four. Like that of his contemporary Søren Kierkegaard, Thoreau's intellectual career unfolded in a close and polemical relation to the town in which he spent almost his entire life. After graduating from Harvard in 1837, he struck up a friendship with fellow Concord resident Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essay "Nature" he had first encountered earlier that year... He lived a simple and relatively quiet life, making his living briefly as a teacher and pencil maker but mostly as a land surveyor. " (Stanford).
HBS 69411.
$12,500.
Details
Title
Manuscript Land Survey
Author
THOREAU, Henry David
Condition
Unknown
Publisher
Massachusetts
Date
1850