Emerson (Ralph Waldo) is born in Boston.

The son of Rev. William and Ruth (Haskins) Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson is born in the parsonage of the First Church in Boston near today’s 27 Summer Street, graduates from Boston Latin School, Harvard College, and Harvard Divinity School, marries Ellen Tucker, and serves as minister at the Second Church in Boston (1829-1832*). He serves on the Boston School Committee (1830-1832), travels in Europe, settles in Concord in 1834, and marries Lydian Jackson in 1835. Emerson becomes a noted writer and speaker, a founder of the Transcendental movement, and the first and greatest public intellectual and philosopher in the U.S. He dies in Concord on April 27, 1882, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Barrett Wendell later writes, “Emerson fearlessly stood forth as the chief representative of that movement which asserted the right of every individual to think, to feel, to speak, to act for himself, confident that so far as each acts in sincerity good shall ensue.”