![]() ![]() Thoreau family pencils, produced behind the family house on Main Street, were generally recognized as America’s best pencils, largely because of Henry’s research into German pencil-making techniques. Thoreau’s family participated in the “quiet desperation” of commerce and industry through the pencil factory owned and managed by his father. For a while he and John considered seeking their fortunes in Kentucky, but at last he fell back onto working in his father’s pencil factory. He was hired as the teacher of the Concord public school, but resigned after only two weeks because of a dispute with his superintendent over how to discipline the children. The fourth, teaching, was one he felt comfortable with, since both of his elder siblings, Helen and John, were already teachers. Furthermore, Thoreau found himself temperamentally unsuited for three of the four usual professions open to Harvard graduates: the ministry, the law, and medicine. In 1837, America was experiencing an economic depression and jobs were not plentiful. Thoreau’s graduation came at an inauspicious time. He did well there and, despite having to drop out for several months for financial and health reasons, was graduated in the top half of his class in 1837. Proving to be a better scholar than his more fun-loving and popular elder brother John, he was sent to Harvard. ![]() He received his education at the public school in Concord and at the private Concord Academy. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was born and lived nearly all his life in Concord, Massachusetts, a small town about twenty miles west of Boston. ![]()
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