Thoreau and the Irish refugees

"The Irish, too, continued to intrigue Thoreau, as growing numbers of refugees settled in Concord. In 1850, when three generations of the Riordan family moved into a shanty near the Deep Cut, at first he was horrified by their dirt-floor poverty. But as he came to know them, he wondered if the Irish weren't realizing his ideals better than he was, living independent lives close to the land without being seduced by Yankee markers of success. He especially admired young Johnny Riordan, leaping "lively as a cricket" from snowbank to snowbank on his way to school while the worthies of Concord waddled past encased in furs. In January 1852, when he saw Johnny with no jacket and snow melting on his bare toes, Henry rushed to tell Cynthia, who set the Charitable Society to sewing. A week later Henry brought Johnny's new coat to the shanty, which he found "warmed by the simple social relations of the Irish... What if there is less fire on the hearth, if there is more in the heart." There he learned that Johnny's uncle had moved to town and took the Irish newspaper, the Flag of Our Union; and it was "musical news" to hear that Johnny, one of the school's best students, "does not love to be kept at home from school in deep snows."" (p. 328 Walls)

Replica of Walden home

He bought wood from the Irish shanties as they moved on to work on the railroad. He seemed to love all kinds, the Native Americans, the escaped slaves. He wrote about helping one escaped slave, in his journal, which would have been incriminating evidence if he journal was ever seized for a court case.

There is something large in spirit, in his insistence to walk, to remain mostly local, to oppose injustice, to wish to be free.

When he went to Cape Cod the first time there was a shipwreck, a hunger ship of starving Irish people whos boat smashed and most of them died. It was a horrible spectacle and wasn't exactly what he expected. A few years later visiting the exact same spot, everything was gone. He would soon go to Fire Island to see if he could find anything of Margaret Fuller, and he only came back with a button. Her book on Rome was lost, her future as a suffragette, and her baby and husband, all died as the bound foundered on a sandbar 300 feet from the shore.

Thoreau was outraged when an employer took the $4 prize from a laborer who won a spading contest. He raised $50 to get Michael Flannery's wife and children to America from Ireland. They got there safely and stayed with the Thoreaus until they were settled. And he wasn't rich like Emmerson who was quite generous with Thoreau.