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| Thanks to everyone who joined us for the fourth annual breakfast with our featured speaker curator Leslie Perrin Wilson |
Presentation Entitled “Those of Us Who…Believe in Neighborhoods”
The Friends of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery are sponsoring a breakfast event on April 10, 2010 featuring
Leslie Perrin Wilson, author and the Curator of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord
Free Public Library.
Leslie Perrin Wilson has been Curator of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord
(Massachusetts) Free Public Library since 1996. A 1975 graduate of Wellesley College, she earned
master’s degrees in library and information science and in English at Simmons College. She writes on
local historical, literary, and other topics, and currently serves as editor of the Thoreau Society Bulletin.
Her book In History’s Embrace appeared in 2007. She has completed a guidebook to Concord and
Lexington, to be published by the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library this year.
Celebrated author Henry David Thoreau (Walden among other works) was born in Concord in 1817.
Ralph Waldo Emerson moved to Concord in 1838 and for the next two decades attracted other like-
minded visionaries – The Alcotts arrived for the first time in 1840; Nathaniel and Sophia Peabody in
1842 for their honeymoon and first residence in The Old Manse; Franklin Sanborn (one of John
Brown’s “Secret Six) in 1855; Sculptor Daniel Chester French in the 1850’s; Margaret Sidney
(children’s author) in 1883; and the cultivator of the Concord Grape Ephraim Wales Bull in 1836.
Frequent visitors to Concord included Sophia Peabody Hawthorne’s sister Elizabeth – publisher of
The Dial newspaper and an active Transcendentalist.
Wilson will explore some of the connections among these accomplished, courageous and vital people
and the profound affect they had on each other. What drew them to Concord? While active travelers,
they always came back to Concord. What beliefs tied them together? And how did the Civil War and
abolitionist efforts draw them closer together?
Leslie Perrin Wilson, author and the Curator of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord
Free Public Library.
Leslie Perrin Wilson has been Curator of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord
(Massachusetts) Free Public Library since 1996. A 1975 graduate of Wellesley College, she earned
master’s degrees in library and information science and in English at Simmons College. She writes on
local historical, literary, and other topics, and currently serves as editor of the Thoreau Society Bulletin.
Her book In History’s Embrace appeared in 2007. She has completed a guidebook to Concord and
Lexington, to be published by the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library this year.
Celebrated author Henry David Thoreau (Walden among other works) was born in Concord in 1817.
Ralph Waldo Emerson moved to Concord in 1838 and for the next two decades attracted other like-
minded visionaries – The Alcotts arrived for the first time in 1840; Nathaniel and Sophia Peabody in
1842 for their honeymoon and first residence in The Old Manse; Franklin Sanborn (one of John
Brown’s “Secret Six) in 1855; Sculptor Daniel Chester French in the 1850’s; Margaret Sidney
(children’s author) in 1883; and the cultivator of the Concord Grape Ephraim Wales Bull in 1836.
Frequent visitors to Concord included Sophia Peabody Hawthorne’s sister Elizabeth – publisher of
The Dial newspaper and an active Transcendentalist.
Wilson will explore some of the connections among these accomplished, courageous and vital people
and the profound affect they had on each other. What drew them to Concord? While active travelers,
they always came back to Concord. What beliefs tied them together? And how did the Civil War and
abolitionist efforts draw them closer together?