Old Academy: Concord’s First “Progressive” School
Concord Enterprise, May 13, 1937
One day in 1821 William Whitney was in Josiah Davis’ store on Main Street talking about what he considered some of the defects of the public grammar school. William Junior had just come home covered with black and blue spots where the other boys had punched him. The schoolmaster, when appealed to, advised taking the boy out of school. Hon. Samuel Hoar joined the conversation at this point and they decided then and there to build a private school. The total cost of land, building and equipment was $2400. Of this, Mr. Hoar, Mr. Davis and Abiel Heywood paid each a quarter, and Nathan [Brooks] and William Whiting each an eighth.
The building was put up in the next year and the Concord Academy opened in September 1823 under the instruction of Mr. George Folsom. Josiah Barnes, Richard Hildreth and Phineas Allen in turn succeeded him. Both Whiting and Squire Hoar gave their daughters as good an education as their sons.
Josiah Davis also planted the elms on Academy Lane. This school building stood on the lane about where Middle Street now runs. It was the school where Henry and John Thoreau taught, beginning in 1838. Among their pupils was a boy of eleven named Sewell whose grandmother and aunt, Mrs. and Miss Ward boarded with the Thoreau family and whose sister Ellen is the girl for whom John and Henry felt a strong attachment.
Henry Thoreau had taught in the Town School for one term the previous year but was unsatisfactory to Deacon Ball, the committeeman, because he did not flog the pupils. Ellery Channing said that Thoreau did not wish to take the town’s money without doing what was expected of him so in the afternoon he punished six children and in the evening resigned the place. Many of his pupils at the Concord Academy remembered the Thoreaus as teachers. Henry opened the day with an interesting and original talk. The boys were taken on field trips, and sometimes one would go home to Mrs. Thoreau’s for dinner, or John would bring down melons from their garden patch for the scholars. Some of the pupils walked over from Bedford every day to school—four miles each way.
When Middle Street was cut through, the house was turned a quarter round and sat back in its present location and made into a double house. It has had a great many tenants, including William Ellery Channing in his latter days, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Emerson who gave the land and started the hospital endowment, and for many years down to the present by Mr. and Mrs. Herbert B. Smith.