Sophia Foord
Sophia Foord (1802-1885) was an American schoolteacher and abolitionist from Dedham, Massachusetts. Personal life Foord was the daughter of James Ford, the clerk of Norfolk County. She lived nearby James Richardson. She was the first depositor at Dedham Savings. While living with the Alcott family in Concord, Massachusetts, she met Henry David Thoreau. Despite being 15 years older than him, she fell in love with him. She proposed marriage to him, but he declined. She had feelings for him for many years, which she would write about in letters to Louisa May Alcott. Foord spent the last years of her life in Dedham, living with her sister, Esther. She died in 1885 and was buried in Brookdale Cemetery. Career Foord taught in the Dedham Middle School in 1833 before moving the Northhampton, Massachusetts to join the Transcendentalist Northampton Association of Education and Industry. It was likely there that she met Amos Bronson Alcott, who convinced her to move to Concord, Massachusetts to join a new school that ultimately never materialized. She lived with the Alcotts in Hillside in 1845. Ralph Waldo Emerson was so impressed with her teaching ability that he hired her to instruct his children. Notes References Works