New Bedford’s Brooklawn Park Has a Connection to Walden Pond

Naturalist, writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau built a small one-room shanty on the shores of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts in a stretch of woods owned by writer and activist Ralph Waldo Emerson, a friend and mentor of Thoreau's from Boston.

Thoreau lived in the house for two years, two months and two days from 1845 to 1847 but was far from a recluse. When he wasn't writing, Thoreau spent time visiting Concord.

Thoreau was also a frequent visitor to Brooklawn, the New Bedford estate of Thoreau's good friend, attorney Daniel Ricketson.

So impressed by Thoreau was Ricketson, he built a shanty of his own at Brooklawn, though slightly larger in scale.

The Brooklawn estate would later become Brooklawn Park.

Thoreau (born July 12, 1817 in Concord) and Ricketson (born July 30, 1813 in New Bedford) "exchanged more than 60 letters and multiple visits between New Bedford and Concord," according to the Walden Woods Project.

Thoreau's time at Walden Woods was highlighted in his book Walden; Or, Life in the Woods.

Thoreau died on May 6, 1862.

The Walden Woods Project says Ralph Waldo Emerson eulogized his friend this way:

"The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost... His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home."

Ricketson died on July 16, 1898, and is buried at Oak Grove Cemetery in New Bedford.

Don Henley, a founding member of the Eagles, founded the not-for-profit Walden Woods Project in 1990, dedicated to protecting the historic Walden Woods from the threat of commercial development and maintaining the "most important library of Thoreau-related research material in the world."

A replica of Thoreau's shanty is open to the public at Walden Pond.