Lidian Jackson Emerson

Lidian Jackson Emerson
Lidian Emerson with Edward Waldo Emerson
Born	(1802-09-20)September 20, 1802 Plymouth, Massachusetts
Died	November 13, 1892(1892-11-13) (aged 90) Concord, Massachusetts
Resting place	Concord, Massachusetts
Known for	wife of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Children	Waldo Emerson, Ellen Emerson, Edith Emerson Forbes, Edward Waldo Emerson

Lidian Jackson Emerson (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.

The fifth child of Charles and Lucy Cotton Jackson, Lydia Jackson was raised in austerity; by the time she was orphaned at sixteen, two of her siblings had also died, and Lydia was sent to live with relatives. At the age of nineteen she developed scarlet fever, which was judged the source of her lifelong poor-health. Her head was said to be "hot ever after", and chronic digestive problems, with neurologic pain in the gastric and epigastric regions, discouraged her from eating and she became quite thin. She also dosed herself with calomel—a commonly-used preparation containing mercury, now known to damage health. The terror of her childhood would haunt Lydia Jackson all her life.

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.