Stories from Special Collections: Herbert Wendell Gleason

BY ANKE VOSS

The Concord Free Public Library’s Special Collections holds a rich and extensive collection relating to Herbert Wendell Gleason (1855-1937), a prominent American landscape photographer and environmentalist. The holdings include close to 7,000 Gleason negatives on glass plates and film, Gleason’s slide lecture “Thoreau’s Country,” albums of Concord, and Thoreau-related images compiled by Gleason himself, as well as correspondence and lecture notes. The Library Corporation, owners and stewards of the Library’s Special Collections, acquired the collection in two separate purchases, including a portion from Roland Wells Robbins - historian, archaeologist, and excavator in 1945 of the foundation of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond. In 1997 and 2000, the Library’s Special Collections received grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to arrange, describe, and create access to these collections.

H.W. Gleason at Thoreau’s cairn, Walden Pond. May 18, 1908

Courtesy of Concord Free Public Library

Herbert Wendell Gleason was born in Malden, Massachusetts. He attended Williams College and received his Bachelor of Divinity from Andover Theological Seminary in 1882. He married Lulie Wadsworth Rounds in 1883. His first career was in the Congregational ministry. He worked as a pastor in Minnesota until 1899, when he retired from the ministry and moved back to Massachusetts to pursue a career as a photographer. Gleason found his calling by documenting the natural world through his photography. His admiration of the works of Henry David Thoreau drew him to Concord for regular visits for the rest of his life; capturing over four decades, the locations, wildlife, and the plants about which Thoreau had written. Gleason’s remarkable images serve as a window into Thoreau’s life. They also chronicle the changes in Concord’s natural world over nearly a half-century. While Gleason consulted Thoreau’s writings and talked with Concord residents who remembered Thoreau, he also regularly referred to maps of Concord and the significant collection of Thoreau surveys in the Concord Free Public Library.

Sun sparkles on Walden Pond, from Heywood’s Peak. October 21, 1920

Courtesy of Concord Free Public Library

The Boston publishing firm of Houghton Mifflin hired Gleason to provide photographs for its twentyvolume publication, The Manuscript Edition of The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906). Gleason’s work also illustrated Houghton Mifflin’s 1917 Through the Year with Thoreau.

Gleason also supported himself by developing over thirty slide lectures on subjects he photographed. His wife was the colorist for his slides. The only surviving slide lecture, “Thoreau’s Country,” which Gleason prepared for the Thoreau centenary, is housed in Special Collections.

Northwest Cove of Walden Pond, ice breaking up (train in distance). March 31, 1920

Courtesy of Concord Free Public Library

Gleason’s work took him to locations throughout North America. In addition to Concord, he photographed widely in New England as well as gardens and estates along the Atlantic coast. He also photographed places in New York, Minnesota, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, California, Washington state, Alaska, and Canada. Some of his photographs of the American West, Alaska, and Canada, also include images of Native Americans. Gleason captured not just the natural environment; his images also feature commerce, industry, architecture, people enjoying outdoor recreational activities, and fashion. He was also instrumental in documenting the earliest National Parks and other areas under consideration for becoming parks for Stephen Mather and Horace Albright, the first directors of the National Park Service. Gleason’s photography also illustrated John Muir’s writings and Luther Burbank’s horticultural experiments. Gleason had many admirers during his lifetime, including Ansel Adams, a preeminent photographer of the American West.

Special Collections includes extensive holdings of photographic prints and negatives, of which the photographs by Herbert Wendell Gleason are an exceptional highlight.

Anke Voss is Curator of the William Munroe Special Collections at Concord Free Public Library.