Emerson, Lidian Jackson, 1802-1892

Variant names

Dates:

Birth 1802-09-20

Death 1892-11-13

Gender:

Female

Nationality: Americans

Language: English

Biographical notes:

Lidian Jackson Emerson (born Lydia Jackson; September 20, 1802 – November 13, 1892) was the second wife of American essayist, lecturer, poet and leader of the nineteenth century Transcendentalism movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and mother of his four children. An intellectual, she was involved in many social issues of her day, advocating for the abolition of slavery, the rights of women and of Native Americans and the welfare of animals, and campaigned for her famous husband to take a public stand on the causes in which she believed.

In 1834, Lydia Jackson heard Ralph Waldo Emerson give a lecture in her town of Plymouth, Massachusetts and was "so lifted to higher thoughts" that she had to hurry home before those thoughts could be tainted with everyday things. She attended another lecture and a social gathering afterward, where she was able to speak with Mr. Emerson. Although by nature a practical woman, she was inclined toward belief in omens and experienced two pre-cognitive episodes, in which she saw herself married to Emerson although they had met only once. A letter from Emerson containing a marriage proposal arrived soon after Lydia's vision of his face, looking into her eyes. Although content, at age thirty-two, with the life of a spinster-aunt who tended a garden and kept chickens, Lydia Jackson accepted Ralph Waldo Emerson's proposal.

The couple were married on September 14, 1835, in the parlor of the Jackson family home overlooking Plymouth Harbor. The house, known as the Edward Winslow House, is now the headquarters of The Mayflower Society.

Newlyweds Lydia and Ralph Waldo Emerson settled immediately in Concord, in a large white house they named "Bush". It was here Lydia Emerson would play hostess to a continual stream of dinner and overnight guests throughout the years of her marriage.

Emerson immediately began calling his wife "Lidian" rather than Lydia, possibly to avoid her name being pronounced "Lidiar" as would be common in New England.

Lidian's frequent bouts of illness and chronic fatigue were exacerbated during pregnancy, when it was difficult for her to take proper nourishment due to gastric upset. Nevertheless, the Emersons had four children. Waldo, born October 30, 1836, succumbed to scarlet fever at age five, a loss from which Lidian never recovered. Eldest daughter Ellen Tucker Emerson, born February 24, 1839, was named for the first wife of Ralph Waldo Emerson at Lidian's suggestion. She remained unmarried and proved to be a great help to her father in his work. She wrote a biography of her mother and lived to the age of sixty-nine. Edith Emerson, born November 22, 1841, married William Hathaway Forbes, son of John Murray Forbes, bore him eight children, and lived to be eighty-seven. Edward Waldo Emerson, born July 10, 1844, became a medical doctor and, upon his death at eighty-five, had outlived all but one of his seven children.