Item #10941 Plan of Robert D. Gilson's Mill in Littleton, Mass…. Drawn by Henry D. Thoreau. May 9, 1857. Henry David THOREAU.
A Manuscript Survey Signed & Dated by Thoreau
Littleton, MA/ Literature.
[1857]

Plan of Robert D. Gilson's Mill in Littleton, Mass…. Drawn by Henry D. Thoreau. May 9, 1857.

11 ¾ x 22 inches (sheet size). Ms. in red and brown ink on heavy wove paper. Lightly age-toned, vertical area of staining at left, very good overall.

A manuscript survey in the hand of a towering figure in American literature.  Only a few such surveys by Thoreau have appeared on the market in the last fifty years.  Most surviving examples, roughly 200 in number, are at the Concord Free Public Library, while a few others are scattered among a handful of institutions. 

 This survey is unusual among Thoreau's surviving works in that it delineates an early industrial site--Robert D. Gilson's mill.  (The Concord Library holds a preliminary, field sketch for this finished work, with the same date as noted above.)  Gilson's Mill was likely located in the northernmost section of Littleton, Massachusetts.   Emerging south from today's Forge Pond in this area is a stream that is today called Gilson's Brook, which may be the "Stoney Brook" that appears on the plan.  It appears the reason the survey was done (though it is not explicitly stated) is that the facility was being re-purposed from a saw to a grist mill (or possibly visa versa).  Thoreau employed two ink colors--red and brown--with the former delineating an earlier structure and the latter indicating the then current one.  The enormous stone of the grist mill is clearly indicated as being still in place.  The survey shows that the flume, the channeled water that powered the mill, had been widened from its previous size presumably to increase its force.

 

It is noted in the Thoreau Chronological Atlas (see reference below) that George Brooks paid $4, which seems a serious sum, for this survey.  In his journal, Thoreau described both the mill in this survey and the house on the property as being in "tumble-down" condition.  He describes its owner, Robert Gilson, as a somewhat odd character.  Brooks was likely in the process of acquiring this property and thus ordered this survey.

 

For most of his brief life--he died at 44 years of age--Thoreau lived on the margins both physically and economically. Though Harvard educated, he made ends meet through a variety of temporary jobs including teaching, the publication of various works that met with some financial success, occasional lectures, and the kindness of important friends, notably Emerson.   However, relatively late in life, he found a line of work that eminently suited both his independent nature and ultra sensitivity to the natural world--surveying.  He embarked on the profession in 1851, just eleven years prior to his death, but became the leading practitioner in the Concord area until slowed by ill health in the year leading up to his death.  The volume of his surveying is all the more remarkable because this period of his life coincided with the publication of his major work Walden (1854) and with some of his widest travels, to Maine and Cape Cod.

Online: https://concordlibrary.org/special-collections/thoreau-surveys/; https://allanhschmidt.org/ (Thoreau's Chronological Atlas).

Sold

See all items in Antique Maps
See all items by