“
Parish affairs and town affairs overlapped substantially. Church and state were not officially separated in Massachusetts until 1834, and as late as that date is, Concord did not comply with the new law until 1856. The church was no longer the only social force in town. When Emerson moved there, Concord had an exclusive group called the Social Circle, limited to twenty-five members, which went back to 1778 (and which still continues), and a library that had been started in 1794 and reorganized in 1821. There was a Female Charitable Society and a Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, both dating from 1814. By Emerson’s time there was a strong antislavery society, in which Cynthia Thoreau, mother of David Henry, was active. The women of Concord sent frequent petitions and memorials to the government in Washington. A lyceum was begun in 1828; it incorporated an earlier debating society. A Mozart society was founded in 1832. By 1835 Concord had sixty-six college graduates, with another four or five currently enrolled as undergraduates. The town itself had six school districts, with separate schools for boys and girls. The schoolhouses, one of which was directly across the street from the Emersons’ new house, were plain and bare, without paint or equipment. Heated by a single stove each, they were always too hot or too cold, and they struggled with an absentee rate that averaged 33 percent. There was a small, precariously maintained private academy for college-bound students.
”
”
Robert D. Richardson Jr. (Emerson: The Mind on Fire)