Portrait of William Emerson

Portrait of William Emerson

William Emerson

Born in Malden in 1743 to the Reverend Joseph Emerson and his wife Mary Moody Emerson, William Emerson—Ralph Waldo’s grandfather—graduated from Harvard College in 1761. He served as a supply preacher here after the death in 1764 of Daniel Bliss, was chosen as Concord’s pastor in February of 1765, and ordained on January 1, 1766. In that same year, he married Phebe Bliss, daughter of his predecessor in the Concord pulpit. In 1770, he moved his wife and the first of their five children (William, born in 1769) from the Block House—the Bliss family home—to the Manse, the house he had readied for them near the North Bridge. The Concord Fight of April 19, 1775 took place in view of his Manse.

William Emerson was a popular as well as an eloquent minister. A champion of political liberty, he was one of Concord’s Revolutionary leaders. When the Provincial Congress met in Concord in October of 1774, he officiated as chaplain. On August 16, 1776, just after the birth of his fifth child, he left Concord to serve as army chaplain at Ticonderoga. He never returned. He became sick, and died at Rutland, Vermont, on October 20th, while trying to come home.

In his 1835 discourse, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of his grandfather: “William Emerson, the pastor, had a hereditary claim to the affection of the people, being descended in the fourth generation, from Edward Bulkeley, son of Peter. But he had merits of his own. The cause of the colonies was so much in his heart, that he did not cease to make it the subject of his preaching and his prayers, and is said to have deeply inspired many of his people with his own enthusiasm.”

All Materials Courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections, Concord Free Public Library

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Concord Free Public Library

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