


He fell back to working at his father's pencil factory in Concord (cool fact: Thoreau pencils were regarded as the best in America - largely thanks to the young Henry’s dogged research of German manufacturing techniques).īut work at the pencil factory neither distracted Thoreau from his intellectual pursuits nor converted him into a materialist, obsessed with the stuff of finance and profit margins. He went to Harvard, graduating in 1837, then tried life as a teacher for a short while before realizing it wasn’t for him. It begins with a name you may have heard - that of Henry David Thoreau.Ībove: A replica of the cabin near Walden Pond where Henry David Thoreau lived in the mid-1840sįrom Pencil Factories to President Polk: The Life and Times of Henry David Thoreauīorn today in 1817, Thoreau was a bright, if indecisive, kid.

His essay explaining why went on the change the world.ĭeep in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, there’s a quiet lake called Walden Pond.Ī story began on the shoreline of this peaceful pond, running from the liberation of India, through to the victories of theĪmerican Civil Rights Movement and beyond. In 1846, when the US invaded Mexico, Henry David Thoreau stopped paying his taxes.
