The Tales of Sleepy Hollow Continue With the Distinguished Hoar Family of Concord

Walk down the three stone steps from Ephraim Wales Bull's grave and look across Hillside Avenue at the Wheildon family plot. See the four little obelisks marking the corners of the plot? [Photo 1] They're to remind us that William Wheildon was the Chair of the association that erected the Bunker Hill Monument, a 221-foot granite obelisk, in Boston's Charlestown neighborhood. The monument commemorates the famous June 17, 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill. The British Army ultimately won that battle, but at a cost of nearly half of the 2,500 men who attacked the hill, prompting the British Commander in Chief to write, "Another such [victory] would have ruined us." The Americans lost about 400 of their 1,500 men. 

The monument, incidentally, is really not on Bunker Hill, but on adjacent Breed's Hill, where most of the battle was fought. The monument's cornerstone was laid June 17, 1825, with The Marquis de Lafayette performing the ceremony and Daniel Webster delivering the oration. 

Cross over Hillside Avenue and take a few steps down Glen Avenue. In the large, walled-in plot on your right is the Hoar family plot [Photo 2], the last plot we'll visit on this tour of Sleepy Hollow.

The Hoar family! What Emerson and friends were to 19th century literary Concord, the Hoars were to law and politics. So prominent were the family's lawyers, judge, and civic leaders at the town, state, and national levels that the Hoars were sometimes called "the royal family of Concord."

Samuel Hoar (1778-1856), among the seventh generation of Hoars in America — sixth in Concord — was a lawyer of such integrity and experience that he bore the honorary title of Squire. He served as Town Meeting moderator, a member of the Massachusetts Governor's Council, a representative and senator in the Massachusetts Legislature, and a representative in the U.S. Congress. A strong advocate of education, temperance, and abolition, Squire Hoar was a Federalist, a Whig, and a founder of the Free Soil Party which, in 1854, he helped to transform into the Republican Party of Massachusetts.

Buried beside Samuel, under the left reddish stone [Photo 3] is his wife Sarah Sherman Hoar (1785-1862), whose father, Roger Sherman, was a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

The right reddish stone in Photo 3 marks the resting place of Sam and Sarah's daughter, Elizabeth Hoar (1816-1878). Elizabeth was engaged to marry Charles Emerson, Ralph Waldo's brother, but Charles died of "consumption" in 1836, before they were wed.

Elizabeth was thereafter treated as a member of the Emerson family, being called "Aunt Lizzie" by the Emerson children, and invited by Waldo to join his Transcendentalist group. There, she became close friends with the Alcotts, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. She worked with Thoreau in preparing the vegetable garden for newlyweds Nathaniel and Sophia Peabody Hawthorne before they moved into the Old Manse. 

But the most exciting chapter in Elizabeth's life — and the life of her father as well — occurred in 1844 when she accompanied him to Charleston, South Carolina. Elizabeth's brother, George Frisbie Hoar tells the story in his autobiography.

"[U]nder the laws of South Carolina, colored seamen on ships that went into the port of Charleston were imprisoned during the stay of the ship, and sold to pay their jail fees if the ship went off and left them, or if the fees were not paid. The Legislature of Massachusetts directed [Governor George Briggs] to employ counsel to test the constitutionality of these laws. No Southern lawyer of sufficient ability and distinction could be found who would undertake the duty." Governor Briggs than prevailed upon Squire Hoar "to leave his retirement in his old age and undertake the delicate and dangerous mission."

When Squire Hoar and Elizabeth "arrived in South Carolina and made known his errand .... [t]he Legislature passed angry resolutions, directing the Governor to expel from the State 'the Northern emissary' whose presence was deemed an insult.

"[A] mob of Charleston threatened to destroy the hotel where Mr. Hoar was staying. He was urged to leave the city, which he firmly and steadfastly refused to do ... A deputation of 70 principal citizens waited upon him at his hotel and requested him to consent to depart. He had already declined the urgent request of Dr. Whittredge, an eminent physician, to withdraw and take refuge at his plantation, saying he was too old to run and could not go back to Massachusetts ... without an attempt to discharge his duty. The committee told him that they had assured the people that he should be removed, and that he must choose between stepping voluntarily into a carriage and being taken to the boat, or being dragged by force. He then, and not until then, said he would go."

Elizabeth and her father were taken secretly out of the hotel and onto a ship. Upon returning to Concord, Squire Hoar reported the story to a Concord Town Meeting. Concord citizens were incensed at the rudeness shown to their most respected citizen and his daughter, as well as the outrageous treatment of free, black Massachusetts citizens and the interference with maritime trade. Thus, despite the apparent failure of the Hoars' mission, the long-term effects were dramatic and far-reaching. Many who had previously not approved of "abolitionist agitation" and had rejected the anti-slavery movement, now changed their minds. 

The impact of the incident on Judge Hoar and his lawyer sons, George Frisbie and Ebenezer Rockwood were profound. Rockwood, a leader of the Mugwumps in the Massachusetts State Senate, argued during a debate on the proposed annexation of Texas as a slave state, that "It is as much the duty of Massachusetts to pass resolutions in favor of the rights of men as in the interests of cotton." He said that he would rather be a "Conscience Whig" than a "Cotton Whig." In 1848, Squire Hoar chaired and Rockwood played a leading role in a Free Soil Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts. The Free Soilers opposed the extension of slavery to new states.

Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (1816-1895) [Photo 4], a Concord lawyer, served as a judge of the Court of Common Pleas in 1848, and was appointed an Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1859, and, a decade later, was appointed U.S. Attorney General by President Ulysses S. Grant. Later, Grant nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Senate refused to confirm him. Later still, Rockwood served a term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He also chaired the 1875 U.S. Centennial celebration in Concord that was attended by President Grant, and at which Daniel Chester French's Minuteman statue was dedicated. You may recall that Rockwood was the person after whom Ephraim Wales Bull named one of his later grapes, as well as the judge whose 1859 writ of habeas corpus prevented the federal marshals from "kidnapping" Franklin Sanborn. 

That writ was drafted in the Greek Revival home that Rockwood and his wife, Caroline Downes Brooks Hoar, had built on Main Street, and in which they raised seven children. [Photo 5] The home is now part of Concord Academy, an exclusive prep school with many distinguished graduates, including Caroline Kennedy and Lisa Najeeb Halaby, who became Queen Noor and is now Queen Dowager of Jordan. Some of the Academy's houses — e.g., Bradford House, Monroe House — are named for their historic owners. Rockwood and Clara's house, however, is called "Hobson House," named for the academy’s first headmistress, Elsie G. Hobson, or simply "194 Main Street."

In our next — and final — tale, we'll focus more closely on George Frisbie Hoar and on his brother Edward Sherman Hoar, as well as mentioning a few other members of  "the royal family of Concord."

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Harry Beyer, a licensed town guide, has lived and walked in Concord since 1966.