The Thoreau family moves to the Josiah Jones house, a brick house on the corner of Walden Road and Main Street, after Henry D. Thoreau’s maternal uncle, Charles, had discovered a graphite mine nearby and asked Thoreau’s father to join the business of manufacturing pencils.
(Journal, 8:65; The Days of Henry Thoreau, 16; The Life of Henry David Thoreau, 36)
Henry D. Thoreau recalls, in a journal entry dated 7 January 1856, some events at this house:
Mother tells how, at the brick house, we each had a little garden a few feet square, and I came in one day, having found a potato just sprouted, which by her advice I planted in my garden. Ere long John came in with a potato which he had found and had it planted in his garden,—“Oh, mother, I have found a potato all sprouted. I mean to put it in my garden,” etc. Even Helen is said to have found one. But next I came crying that somebody had got my potato, etc., etc., but it was restored to me as the youngest and original discoverer, if not inventor, of the potato, and it grew in my garden, and finally its crop was dug by myself and yielded a dinner for the family. I was kicked down by a passing ox. Had a chicken given me by Lidy—Hannah—and peeped through the keyhole at it. Caught an eel with John. Went to bed with new boots on, and after with cap. “Rasselas” given me, etc., etc. Asked P. [Phebe] Wheeler, “Who owns all the land?” Asked Mother, having got the medal for geography, “Is Boston in Concord?” If I had gone to Miss Wheeler a little longer, should have received the chief prize book, “Henry Lord Mayor,” etc., etc.
