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

heat content David Thoreau - Conservationist, Visionary, and Humanist         He spent his life in voluntary poverty, enthralled by the study ofnature.  deuce years, in the prime of his life, were spent living in a shackin the woods near a pond.  Who would choose a life alike(p) this? atomic number 1 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 born 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 name to HenryDavid.  Thoreau was raised with his older child Helen, older brother John,and younger sister Sophia (Derleth 1) in genteel poverty (The 1995 GrolierMultimedia Encyclopedia 1).  It quickly became evide nt that Thoreau wasinterested in literature and writing. At a young 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 admited to HarvardUniversity, but his parents could not afford 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 kinsfolk first.  HeThoreau stood close to the top of his class, but he went his own way toomuch to reach the top (5).         In December 1835, Thoreau decided to digress Harvard and attempt toearn a living by teaching, but that only lasted about a month and a half(8).  He returned to college in the crash of 1836 and graduated on August 16,1837 (12).&n bsp Thoreaus years at Harvard University gave him one great gift,an introduction 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 desire to be a poet (Derleth 14),but most of all he wanted to live with freedom to think and act as hewished.         Immediately after beginning from Harvard, Henry David applied fora teaching position at the public school in Concord and was accepted.However, he refused to flog children as punishment.  He opted kinda to