The Concord School of Philosophy, next to the Orchard House, was founded by Bronson Alcott as an adult education center. Linda and I found Concord, Massachusetts, to be the Mother Lode of American literature. I have already written of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and how they were part of the Transcendentalism Movement, an idealistic philosophical and social movement that developed in reaction to rationalism and taught that divinity pervades all nature and humanity.

Bronson Alcott was among the liberal thinkers who founded the Transcendental Club in Concord in 1836. He was a teacher, writer, philosopher, reformer, and, most famously, the father of Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women. Bronson Alcott founded two schools in Boston and married his assistant, Abby May. They lived on the edge of poverty experimenting with “radical” educational methods such as selfinstruction and self-analysis.

Louisa May Alcott, daughter of Bronson Alcott, wrote Little Women, a description of her family life in Concord. The Alcotts raised their children – Anna, Louisa May, Elizabeth, and Abby in a “spiritual culture” which included challenging the Christian Gospels. They faced public criticism when they openly opposed slavery and admitted a black student to their school.

In 1840, Emerson sponsored their escape to Concord and the safety of Transcendentalism. Alcott founded a utopian community and school, fostered vegetarianism, opposed alcohol and stimulant consumption. He continued his abolitionist views by becoming a station of the Underground Railroad, opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War, and refused to pay his taxes. …And helped Thoreau build his home at Walden.

The Alcotts left the “cold, heartless, brainless, soulless” Concord for Boston in 1848 only to return nine years later when Bronson became school superintendent. Their home, Orchard House, is now the museum we visited.

Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May, was a Transcendentalist teacher and philosopher. Louisa May served as a nurse in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War, the experience which became her first book, Hospital Sketches. Little Women followed in 1868.

Bronson founded the Concord School of Philosophy in 1879 next to their home. It was an adult education center which drew lecturers from around the world. The Alcotts participated in the funerals of Thoreau (1862), Hawthorne (1864), and Emerson (1882). Bronson died March 4, 1888; Louisa May followed her father two days later. Transcendentalism faded into the writings of its adherents.

Next week: Pittsfield, Stockbridge, and Lenox