CONCORD, MASS.- A few days ago, the Concord Museum was bequeathed an unknown rare daguerreotype of Sophia Thoreau (1819-1876), the younger sister of Henry David Thoreau.

David Wood, Curator of the Concord Museum, explained, “It really is extraordinary that this previously unknown image of Sophia Thoreau should turn-up at just this moment, the Bicentennial of her brother’s birth. It is especially remarkable that her image should come to the Concord Museum, since all the great Thoreau objects in our collection came through her hands. Sophia gave her brother’s desk to Cummings Davis, the founder of the collection that became the Concord Museum. And of course Thoreau’s journal went through Sophia’s hands to H.G.O. Blake, who first edited substantial portions of it for publication.” The Concord Museum’s Henry David Thoreau Collection, numbering 250 artifacts, is the largest collection of objects related to Concord’s native son.

The discovery of this new image of Sophia Thoreau calls attention to her role in her brother’s legacy. Like many writers and artists, Henry David Thoreau became famous after his death. Despite some contemporary indifference to Thoreau’s literary efforts, his sister Sophia maintained faith in his work and responsibility for safe-guarding his personal possessions and manuscripts.

In the 20th century, Thoreau’s writings of Walden and the essay ‘Civil Disobedience’ influenced many, including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. David Wood stated, “Both Thoreau’s literary legacy and his material legacy owe a great deal to Sophia Thoreau. She truly was the keeper of Thoreau’s flame.”

Sophia Thoreau’s image, a gift to the Concord Museum from the Geneva Frost Estate in Maine, will be incorporated into This Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal, the most comprehensive exhibition ever created about Thoreau, when it opens at the Concord Museum, September 29, 2017. Sophia’s image will be placed near Henry David Thoreau’s quill pen. It is tagged and inscribed with a hand-written note from Sophia, ‘The pen that brother Henry last wrote with.’

Sophia Thoreau (1819-1876)
Sophia Thoreau was a gifted amateur botanist at a time when the field was dominated by amateurs. Her brother Henry noted with surprise on several occasions that his sister had found some rare specimen he had never seen or had found things in bloom before he had. She was also very good at preparing plant specimens for study and seems to have given or perhaps sold her work to Louis Agassiz, Harvard’s first professor of botany. Her specimens are neatly and nearly invisibly attached to the backing sheet with small strips of paper. She extended her skill at preparing plant specimens in some remarkable ways. This shagbark hickory leaf is inscribed with a line from Shakespeare’s seventy-seventh sonnet: “Thou by the dial’s shady stealth may’st know/ Time’s thievish progress to eternity.”