Sophia Foord
Sophia Foord (1802-1885) was an American schoolteacher and abolitionist from Dedham, Massachusetts.
Personal life[edit]
Foord was the daughter of James Ford, the clerk of Norfolk County.[1] She lived nearby James Richardson.[1]
She was the first depositor at Dedham Savings.[2]
While living with the Alcott family in Concord, Massachusetts, she met Henry David Thoreau.[1] Despite being 15 years older than him, she fell in love with him.[1][3] She proposed marriage to him, but he declined.[1][3] She had feelings for him for many years, which she would write about in letters to Louisa May Alcott.[1][a]
Foord spent the last years of her life in Dedham, living with her sister, Esther.[4] She died in 1885 and was buried in Brookdale Cemetery.[4]
Career[edit]
Foord taught in the Dedham Middle School in 1833 before moving the Northhampton, Massachusetts to join the Transcendentalist Northampton Association of Education and Industry.[5] It was likely there that she met Amos Bronson Alcott, who convinced her to move to Concord, Massachusetts to join a new school that ultimately never materialized.[1] She lived with the Alcotts in Hillside in 1845.[1]
Ralph Waldo Emerson was so impressed with her teaching ability that he hired her to instruct his children.[1]
Notes[edit]
- ^ Louisa May Alcott once worked in the Richardson home.
References[edit]
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Parr 2009, p. 73.
- ^ a b ""Sophia Ford: The Great Love Henry David Thoreau Didn't Want"". New England Historical Society. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
- ^ a b Parr 2009, p. 74.
- ^ "SOPHIA FOORD — ABOLITIONIST AND TEACHER". Duke University Libraries. Retrieved July 29, 2023.
Works cited[edit]
- Parr, James L. (2009). Dedham: Historic and Heroic Tales From Shiretown. The History Press. ISBN 978-1-59629-750-0.