31. J.W. Black (Boston). Emily Barrett Thompson, ca. 1864. From a carte de visite (source undiscovered).

George Minot Barrett—a successful farmer of distinguished Concord ancestry (see #37)—and Elizabeth Prescott Barrett had six children, five of whom lived to adulthood. Their daughter Emily Augusta was born in 1829.

In January of 1864, at the age of thirty-five, Emily Barrett married Sudbury lawyer Charles Thompson. In 1872, the Thompsons moved from Sudbury to Concord, where Charles practiced law, chaired the Board of Selectmen, and served as a special justice of the District Court of Central Middlesex. The couple lived in the center of town, on Main Street, in a house (no longer standing) that had earlier belonged to Cyrus Warren and had been bought by Emily's father. Charles died in 1903, his wife in 1906.

This photograph shows Emily Barrett Thompson around the time she was married. Although a mature bride, she was still attractive and youthful, in contrast to her slightly older, considerably more tired-looking sister Mary Warren, who married young and was a mother several times over when her picture was taken in late 1864 (see #25).