EMERSON, Ralph Waldo, American poet and philosopher: b. Boston, 25 May 1803; d.
Concord, Mass., 27 April 1882. The celebration in 1903 of the 100th birthday of Ralph Waldo Emerson served as a meter to mark how wide and deep was the influence which a single origi nal thinker gifted with literary expression can exert at the end of his first century; for there was public recognition of his ethical and poetic genius in every quarter of the globe. Along with this appreciation went also the perception that a distinct Emersonian school of thought had arisen, modified in some degree by the circle of striking writers and talkers—men and women of thought, fancy, imagination and elo quence—who gathered around Emerson early o'r late in his career and now constitute the group known as the °Concord Authors,D or the Concord School of Philosophy. Most of these at one time or another lived in the rural village of Concord in Massachusetts, where Emerson spent a half century of his life. Such were Alcott, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Ellery Charming, Louisa Alcott, George William Curtis, Eliza beth Hoar, Elizabeth Peabody, Julian Haw thorne, J. W. Chadwick, W. T. Harris, John Albee, F. B. Sanborn, F. P. Stearns —all of whom lived for longer or shorter times in Con cord; and on the outside of the circle, yet not far away, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, Dr. Bartol, David Wasson, Mrs. Ednah Cheney, Christopher Cranch and John S. Dwight. All these stood in relations more or less direct to Emerson, and were influenced in varying de grees by his fertilizing mind and gentle social attraction. Several of them, as Hawthorne, Thoreau, Channing, Margaret Fuller and Al cott, were as original as Emerson, though less gifted with the qualities that form a school or coterie; and none of them could properly be styled satellites or Emersonidm although that term has been applied to several of them. Emerson was the eldest born of all these, except Alcott. He was the son of a Boston pastor, Rev. William Emerson of the First Church, which had become Unitarian instead of Cal vinistic. Most of his male ancestors as far back as the English Reformation were clergy men, and his middle name, Waldo, was said traditionally to come from one of those Wal denses who incurred the censure of the popes as heretics far away in the Middle Ages. His
oldest American 'ancestor founded the Christian Church in Conc&d in 1635 (Rev. Peter Bulke ley) and by t at line Emerson was related to the noble En lish family of Saint John, of which was P pe's brilliant friend Bolingbroke. From anoth r clerical ancestor, Rev. William Thompson, hrough the Cogswells, he was re lated to W dell Phillips, Phillips Brooks and other men amous for eloquence; and by an other line e descended from a clerical family of Moodys whose genius verged upon insanity. This last ame was perpetuated in Emerson's aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, his father's sister, who had ore to do with his intellectual and spiritual t ining than any other of his early instructors. With this strong clerical bent in his ancest young Waldo Emerson was des tined to t e pulpit from his cradle, and was carefully e ucated in Boston and Harvard Col lege with t at view. He entered college early and came , under eminent teachers, Edward Everett in ipreelc, George Ticknor and Edward Chaniting literature and Caleb Cushing in mathematics\ —but for the last-named study he had no inclination, and did not stand high in general scholarship at his graduation in 1821. He read widely, however, and the discipline of teaching in his elder brother William's school for young ladies at his mother's house in Frank lin street, Boston, gave him exactness in Latin, French and Greek. He presently (1823) took up the study of divinity with Dr. Channing and Prof. Andrews Norton, and began to preach sermons in 1827. He spent much time in youth at his grandmother's, who owned the Old Manse in Concord, and there he preached for some months in 1828, during the absence of her second husband, Rev. Dr. Ripley. His own grandfather, Rev. William Emerson of Coticord, who built the Old Manse, died as a chaplain in the Revolutionary army in 1776.