July 4th at Alcott House

We left Cape Ann Campground in the muddy rain, and headed toward Alcott House in Concord, MA. This was Nora’s pick for the trip. Hazel’s pick was Salem, where she hopes to return for Halloween one year. En route to Alcott House, we stopped by Author’s Row at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. We were also planning to make a not so direct stop to a cemetery in Andover to see the gravesite of Mary Clement Osgood, an ancestor (though also not so direct) of Nora, Hazel, and mine who was tried as a witch in Salem. She was not killed, but was imprisoned for 6 months. Packing up and cleaning the mud off of our pop-up before closing it took way too long. Mary Osgood gravesite added to our list for our next trip.

Graves of Thoreau Family. Zoom in and look for the grave with the pencils.

Hawthorne Family here: Same thing about the grave with the pencils

Alcott Family

Louisa May Alcott - writer and Union nurse in the civil war. When she wrote Little Women, based on her family’s life, much regarding what she wrote about her father - receiving a telegram of his illness, his coming home sick and injured from the war - was actually about her. Her dad was never in the military. One thing that we did not know (until the Alcott House tour) was that the Alcott’s had John Brown over for dinner - at least once. They were all abolitionists.

Emerson family grave site

At Alcott House, we met up with Ty and Randy. Here is a picture of Ty and Hazel having a very philosophical conversation on a bench under a tree, next to the School of Philosophy House…..