Jones Very of Salem. A Transcendental poet.
Elisabeth Hoar was the daughter of Samuel Hoar of Concord, Mass., and of Sarah, the daughter of Roger Sherman of Connecticut. Elisabeth was not the least gifted of her very gifted family. One brother, recently deceased, was President Grant’s first Attorney-General; another is the well-known Senator from Massachusetts to the Congress of the United States; and a third, Edward Sherman Hoar, was distinguished as a scholar and botanist. To great intellectual gifts, Elisabeth added personal loveliness and a saintly serenity of character. She was betrothed to Charles Emerson (a brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson), who died of sudden illness just before the time appointed for their marriage. He was also a rarely gifted person, and after his death his family transferred their tenderest affection to Elisabeth. The reader of the various Lives of Emerson will see that she is often mentioned, and several of Emerson’s letters are addressed to her. Had she chosen to devote herself to literature, she would have been greatly distinguished. The Life of Mrs. Ripley of Waltham, written for “The Women of Our First Century,” and published by a committee appointed at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, was written by her. She died in 1878.
A. Bronson Alcott of Concord. A memoir of him has been written by the Hon. F. B. Sanborn of Concord, assisted by Wm. T. Harris.
W. Mack. A gentleman of great ability, who taught a school in Belmont. His daughter was the first wife of Stillman, the artist. The family is, I think, extinct, unless Mrs. Stillman left a daughter.
Sophia Peabody. A younger sister of E. P. P., afterwards Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Marianne Jackson. A lovely, beloved, and accomplished woman, who died early. She was the daughter of Judge Charles Jackson, one of the soundest jurists who ever sat on a Massachusetts bench,—the sister of Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Mrs. Charles C. Paine, and the aunt, I believe, of Mr. John T. Morse.
I have reserved for the last the name of the only sound Greek scholar among us: Charles Wheeler.
Charles Stearns Wheeler. Born in Lincoln, near Concord, Dec. 19, 1816, of H. U. 1837, distinguished as a Greek scholar from whom much was expected. To economize in order to pursue his Greek studies he built a shanty at Walden, which is said to have served as a suggestion to Thoreau. He went to Germany directly after these Conversations, and died suddenly of fever at Leipzig, in the summer of 1843. His death was a great grief and a great shock. I have not forgotten the sensation it produced. Beloved and honored by all who knew him, the community of scholars was especially bereaved. To this day, I am able to trust fearlessly to any information obtained from him.