For Immediate Release

Contact: Lucille Daniel Stott, president
Thoreau Farm Trust, Inc.
978-369-3091

Thoreau Farm Trust Signs Purchase and Sale Agreement for Thoreau Birth House

June 22, 2004

Concord, MA - The Thoreau Farm Trust, Inc., a small, nonprofit citizens group dedicated to the rehabilitation and restoration of the Henry David Thoreau birth house, (341 Virginia Road, Concord), is scheduled to sign a purchase and sale agreement with the Town of Concord on Monday, June 28, for the house and two acres of surrounding land. The signing will take place at the Board of Selectmen’s meeting at the Concord Town House, 22 Monument Square. The meeting begins at 7:30 p.m.

The Town of Concord purchased the house (designated by the Concord Historical Commission as the Wheeler-Minot Farmhouse/Thoreau birth house) and 20 acres of surrounding land, in 1997 from the Breen family, following a Town Meeting vote that spring. Only $160,000 of town funds were used in the $960,000 purchase, with the rest being raised through corporate and foundation grants, a donation from Massport, a state grant, and many private donations. The purchase guaranteed that the historic house would be saved from destruction and the farmland preserved from development.

Currently, 18 acres of the land are being leased by the Town of Concord to Gaining Ground, a Concord-based nonprofit farming group that raises food for the hungry. At the time of the purchase, the Town of Concord put out a call for local citizens to take on the rehabilitation of the house, which is currently uninhabitable.

As a condition of the purchase and sale agreement, the Thoreau Farm Trust (TFT) will have two years to raise the necessary funds to restore and rehabilitate the house. When the necessary funds have been raised, the TFT will take title and begin work on the house. The TFT’s plans involve restoring the exterior of the house to its appearance at around the time it was moved from one side of the original farm to the other, in 1878. The room where Thoreau was born in 1817, which contains many elements of its original historic fabric, will be restored to its appearance at the time of his birth. The rest of the interior will be rehabilitated for habitation and/or use by the Thoreau Farm Trust, with all historic fabric carefully preserved in the process. The TFT will also be raising funds for the next two phases of its proposed plans for the site: construction of a barn to serve as a small education center and the implementation of modest programming. Education at the site will focus on the history and tradition of agriculture in Concord and on Thoreau’s life in the Concord community and his important legacy as a naturalist, environmentalist, and author.

During the past year, the Thoreau Farm Trust hired a part-time executive director, Molly Eberle of Concord, to oversee its work. It also engaged the services of two consultants, architect Larry Sorli of Carlisle and historic materials conservator Bill Finch of Beverly. Working as a team, Sorli and Finch helped shape the TFT’s restoration and rehabilitation plans for the house, and these preliminary plans were accepted by the Massachusetts Historical Commission as consistent with the Secretary of the Interior’s guidelines for the treatment of historic structures. Earlier this year, the house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The TFT has also benefited from the help of BayTrust, Inc, of Maynard, a nonprofit development company dedicated to helping communities implement projects involving preservation and affordable housing. BayTrust’s president, Joe Mullin, and other representatives of the company, were instrumental in providing advice to TFT board members during negotiations with the Town of Concord.

“We have been working a long time for this day,” said Lucille Daniel Stott, president of the Thoreau Farm Trust. “We are very grateful to the Town of Concord for its help and support throughout these negotiations and for its confidence in us. We have a lot of work ahead of us to raise the funds we need to take title to the property and then complete the remainder of the project. But we have received many signs of support from local residents and interest from beyond Concord as well. The main reason I became involved in the Thoreau Farm Trust back in 1998 was my firm belief that Concord needed a small place of its own, aside from the Walden Pond cabin, to acknowledge Thoreau as a family man and town citizen. The fact that he was born on a large farm, with historical significance that preceded and followed his birth, also allows us to use the site as a way to honor the long and incredibly rich farming tradition in Concord. We see our project as a complement to the other historical sites in town - as a way to fill a niche while forming supportive bonds with other institutions.”

Stott, a freelance writer and editor, is editor of Appalachia, the mountaineering and conservation journal of the Appalachian Mountain Club, and a former editor and managing editor of The Concord Journal. Other members of the Thoreau Farm Trust include: Courtland Booth, director of Concord’s Adult and Community Education; Helen Bowdoin of the Walden Woods Project; Brian Donahue, director of Environmental Studies at Brandeis University and author, most recently of The Great Meadow: The Nature of Husbandry in Concord, published by Yale University Press; Jayne Gordon, executive director of the Thoreau Society; Michael Kellett, executive director of Restore: the North Woods; Barbara Lambert, a historic conservationist; John Mack, treasurer of the Thoreau Society and member of several Concord conservation/preservation organizations; Tim Rodgers, a Virginia Road neighbor of the property and Gaining Ground board member; and Joseph Wheeler, a member of the Concord Historical Commission, a board member of the Thoreau Society, and the charter president of the Thoreau Farm Trust. For more information on the Thoreau Farm Trust, visit our website at www.thoreaufarm.org.