I learned recently that years before Thoreau built his famous little cabin at Walden Pond in Concord, Mass., a former slave called Brister Freeman and his family made their home in Walden Woods.
Robbins House reports, “Brister Freeman was enslaved in Concord for the first 30 or so years of his life. After taking his freedom in the late 1770s, he purchased an acre of ‘old field’ in Walden Woods. Other formerly enslaved people followed and Walden Woods became one of three black enclaves that sprung up in Concord following gradual emancipation in Massachusetts.”
I happened upon Freeman’s house site this morning when I took my walk, and because my photo is hard to read, I copied down what the marker says.
“Near here lived Brister Freeman (d. 1822)
formerly enslaved in Concord
Fenda Freeman (d. 1811) and their family
” ‘Down the road on the right hand on Brister Hill lived Brister Freeman, there where grow still the apple trees which Brister planted and tended.’ Thoreau, Walden, 1854.”
When I got home, I looked up more information. I felt woefully ignorant considering that I have lived in the town for many years.
The National Endowment for the Humanities posted about Black Walden back in 2010. It’s painful to read some of these details though we already know slavery is repellent.
“In Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, Elise Lemire (rhymes with sheer), a literature professor at Purchase College of the State University of New York, describes an aspect of Concord’s history that most accounts have overlooked. …
“[One] former slave, Brister Freeman, is the hero of Black Walden. He was named with a diminutive form of Bristol, after the English slave-trading port, whose ships plied routes to both Africa and the West Indies. Black Walden’s other main protagonist is Colonel John Cuming, a wealthy landholder and doctor in Concord who was Brister Freeman’s master for twenty-five years, having received the nine-year-old slave boy as a wedding present from his father-in-law. …
“Ironically, history has reversed the two men’s positions. ‘Unlike Brister Freeman, whose name survives in Walden the book and at Walden the place, where a hill [Brister’s Hill] bears his name,’ Lemire writes, ‘John Cuming has been largely forgotten.’ His large estate was broken up long ago and is now the site of a state prison; Cuming’s mansion house is a prison office building. The Cuming name survives only on a local medical building. …
“Freeman, who served alongside Cuming in the Revolutionary War, had acquired a wide range of farming and survival skills while managing the Cuming estate during his master’s numerous absences, and likely learned a good deal about local politics by watching Cuming rule the town of Concord. Though many liberated slaves continued to live on their masters’ estates as paid servants (their options being few), Freeman, who took his telling surname after gaining his liberty during the Revolution, instead managed to buy and farm an acre of ‘lousy, sandy soil’ near Walden so that he could marry and have children. ‘He was harassed all the time,’ Lemire says, ‘but he never gave up. I see why Thoreau saw him as heroic.’”
Then there’s this from the Walden Woods Project: “Brister’s Hill is a few hundred feet from Walden Pond, and was one of Henry David Thoreau’s study sites later in his life. In the late 1980s, a large commercial development was proposed on Brister’s Hill that was such a significant threat to the Walden ecosystem that the National Trust for Historic Preservation twice listed Walden Woods as one of America’s Eleven Most Endangered Historic Places. This threat, as well as another proposed development at Bear Garden Hill, spurred the foundation of the Walden Woods Project. …
“In 2013, we installed a Toni Morrison Society Bench by the Road at Thoreau’s Path on Brister’s Hill. The Bench by the Road Project seeks to recognize the contributions of enslaved people to the building of this nation. For much more about the program, we encourage you to visit the official Toni Morrison website.”
Find more information at the historic Robbins House website, at the National Endowment for the Humanities, and at the Walden Woods Project. Enjoy!
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