Henry David Thoreau - Conservationist, Visionary, and Humanist :: Biography Biographies Essays

enthalpy David Thoreau - Conservationist, Visionary, and Humanist         He spent his life in voluntary poverty, enthralled by the study ofnature.  Two years, in the primordial of his life, were spent living in a shackin the wood near a pond.  Who would choose a life like this? total heat DavidThoreau did, and he enjoyed it.  Who was Henry David Thoreau, what did hedo, and what did others think of his work?         Henry David Thoreau was natural in Concord, Massachusetts on July 12,1817 (Thoreau 96), on his grandmothers farm.  Thoreau, who was ofFrench-Huguenot and Scottish-Quaker ancestry, was baptized as David HenryThoreau, but at the age of twenty he legally changed his throw to HenryDavid.  Thoreau was raised with his older sister Helen, older brother John,and junior sister Sophia (Derleth 1) in genteel poverty (The 1995 GrolierMultimedia Encyclopedia 1).  It quick became evident tha t Thoreau wasinterested in literature and writing. At a teen age he began to showinterest writing, and he wrote his first essay, The Seasons, at thetender age of ten, while attending Concord Academy (Derleth 4).         In 1833, at the age of sixteen, Henry David was directed to HarvardUniversity, but his parents could not sustain the cost of tuition so hissister, Helen, who had begun to teach, and his aunts offered to help.  Withthe assistance of his family and the beneficiary funds of Harvard he wentto Cambridge in August 1833 and entered Harvard on September first.  HeThoreau stood close to the head of his class, but he went his aver way toomuch to discover the top (5).         In December 1835, Thoreau decided to leave Harvard and attempt to recognise a living by teaching, but that only lasted about a month and a half(8).  He returned to college in the fall of 1836 and calibrated on August 16,1837 (12).  Thoreaus years at Harvard University gave him one great gift,an basis to the world of books.         Upon his return from college, Thoreaus family found him to be lesslikely to accept opinions as facts, more argumentative, and inordinatelyprone to shock people with his own independent and unconventional opinions.During this time he discovered his secret thirst to be a poet (Derleth 14),but most of all he treasured to live with freedom to think and act as hewished.         flat after graduation from Harvard, Henry David applied fora teaching power at the public school in Concord and was accepted.However, he refused to thrash children as punishment.  He opted instead to