David Henry Thoreau (as he was christened) was born in a farmhouse in Concord, Massachusetts, on 12 July 1817, five years after the marriage of his parents, John Thoreau and Cynthia Dunbar, both of Boston. John--the son of a Huguenot immigrant from the Isle of Jersey--was a gentle, kindly, and mild-mannered man who had moved restlessly from town to town working as a store clerk, then owner of a general store, and briefly as a schoolteacher in Boston before finally settling the family for good in Concord in 1823. Cynthia was a vigorous and outspoken social activist of English and Scottish descent whose parents had been staunch Tories during the Revolutionary War. The Thoreaus' first child, Helen, was born a few months after their marriage in 1812, followed by their first son, John Jr., in 1815; David Henry was followed by his sister Sophia in 1819.
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