For hundreds of years Native Americans cultivated the land where the Thoreau Birthplace now stands, until the Town of Concord, Massachusetts was chartered in 1635. Early settler Thomas Wheeler acquired the land, who passed it to his sons John and Timothy. John developed his portion into a prosperous farm and around 1730 built the farmhouse. It was then located several hundred yards to the west and was moved to its present location in the late 19th Century. In 1756, Deacon Samuel Minot purchased the property and then conveyed the property to his son Jonas. Jonas expanded the farm to over one hundred acres by the late 18th Century. Six years after his wife passed away, Jonas married Mary Jones Dunbar, Thoreau’s widowed grandmother. Henry Thoreau’s mother, Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau, lived here as a teenager. She and her husband, John Thoreau, moved into the house in 1813 and Henry Thoreau (christened David Henry) was born in the upper east bedroom on July 12, 1817.

The Thoreaus left the farm in 1818, and the house subsequently had many residents and went through many changes throughout the 19th Century. Although the house was a private home, literary scholars, tourists and Thoreauvian pilgrims made the house a destination site. Bought by the Breen family in the early 20th Century, they owned it until 1995; the house then remained empty and fell into disrepair.  The Thoreau Farm Trust was created in 1999 to save the house and land from private development, and with the help of private and public funds the house was restored and opened as a Museum in 2010.  Contact thoreaufarm.org for tours and hours of operation.

This site is included on the itinerary Following in Thoreau’s Footsteps: Exploring the Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area created by The Thoreau Society with support from the Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area Partnership Grants Program.