A sketch of the old Concord jail.

February 9.

A. M. — To old Hunt house with Thatcher. 

The stairs of the old back part are white pine or spruce, each the half of a square log; those of the cellar in front, oak, of the same form. There is no ridge-pole whatever, —not even a board,—but a steep roof; and some of the rafters are oak saplings, hewn and showing a good deal of bark, and scarcely three inches diameter at the small end; yet they have sufficed. 

Saw at Simon Brown's a sketch, apparently made with a pen, on which was written, “Concord Jail, near Boston America,” and on a fresher piece of paper on which the above was pasted, was written, “The jail in which General Sir Archld Campbell & Wilson were confined when taken off Boston in America by a French Privateer.” A letter on the back side, from Mr. Lewis of Framingham to Mr. Brown, stated that he, Lewis, had received the sketch from the grandson of Wilson, who drew it. 

You are supposed to be in the jail-yard, or close to it westward, and see the old jail, gambrel-roofed, the old Hurd house (partly) west of the graveyard, the graveyard, and Dr. Hurd house, and, over the last and to the north of it, a wooded hill, apparently Windmill Hill, and just north of the Hurd house, beyond it, apparently the court-house and schoolhouse, each with belfries, and the road to the Battle-Ground, and a distant farmhouse on a hill, French’s or Buttrick's, perhaps.

Begins to snow at noon, and about one inch falls, whitening the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 9, 1858


The old Hunt house. See February 17, 1857 ("To the old Hunt house."); December 20, 1857 ("The cellar stairs at the old Hunt house are made of square oak timbers . . ."); and note to  February 1, 1851 ("Adam Winthrop, a grandson of the Governor, who sold this farm to Hunt in 1701. I saw the old window")

The jail in which General Sir Archld Campbell & Wilson were confined. See Sir Archibald Campbell of Inverneill; sometime prisoner of war in the jail at Concord, Massachusetts ("A picture of the old wooden jail, which is said to be a drawing made by Campbell, hangs in the Concord Public Library and shows the building as it appeared in Revolutionary times.")

Begins to snow at noon, and about one inch falls, whitening the ground. See February 9, 1856 ("Half an inch of snow fell this forenoon")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  February 9

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023