July 12 @7:00 pm

In his Journals, Thoreau often wrote about Concordian George Minott, who lived with his sister Mary, a tailor, in a house atop the ridge overlooking Lexington Road. Minott was one of Thoreau’s models for a self-sufficient man who never went to market; Mary, meanwhile, labored regularly for pay. Of course, Thoreau also says in Walden that a laborer’s life is the one for him, enabling him to support himself easily. It is doubtful that other local laborers, or the women who toiled in the cotton and woolen factory in West Concord, would say the same. Historian and author Robert Gross takes a look at the ordinary men and women who worked hard to survive their daily lives at a time when many of Concord’s famous writers and speakers were on the world stage.

Presented by Robert Gross, Draper Professor of Early American History, Emeritus at the University of Connecticut.