The Old Manse, viewed from its Concord River side.
The Old Manse is a house
famous for its American literary associations.
It is located beside the Old North Bridge over the
Concord River in Concord, Massachusetts, and now
owned and operated as a nonprofit museum by the
Trustees of Reservations.
The
Old Manse was built in 1770 by William Emerson, father
to noted minister Rev. William Emerson, and his famous
son Ralph Waldo Emerson. The builder was chaplain
to the Provincial Congress when it met at Concord
in October 1774, and when war had begun a chaplain
to the Continental Army. The Emerson family observed
the Battle of Lexington and Concord from the windows
of their house as it took place across the nearby
Old North Bridge.
Many
years later, in 1842, the famous American writer Nathaniel
Hawthorne moved to the Old Manse with his new bride,
transcendentalist Sophia Peabody, and the two lived
there for three years. Hawthorne's Mosses from an
Old Manse (1846) reflects this period.
