John Burroughs and his North Canaan correspondent

This is the second in a two-part series. The first appeared in the Sept. 25 Lakeville Journal.

NORTH CANAAN — The revelation did nothing to dampen the correspondence. John Burroughs and Sarah Adam shared a love of nature and a similar philosophy about its creatures.They both agreed that watching birds was far better than shooting them, even if mounted specimens were useful for scientific purposes.

A quiet country life

For Miss Adam, life in North Canaan in the Gilded Age was rather uneventful. Trains made regular stops at the Union Station, but there were few cultural attractions and the pace of life was slow. Her correspondence with a naturalist of growing fame was stimulating.

 It was equally so for Burroughs. Their letters provided a means for him to exchange ideas with an astute student of nature and to write out his observations. His own work in Washington was rather tedious (he kept track of the federal notes going in and out of a large vault) and he often wrote while staring at its blank iron door.

From Miss Adam, Burroughs received intelligent criticism, lively debate and a sympathetic ear. She in turn got to read the germination of ideas from “John o’ Birds� before anyone else, ideas that would often later appear in his books.

One celebrated passage that Burroughs wrote to Adam about the song of the hermit thrush was later included in another article in The Atlantic Monthly, which in turn became the first chapter of “Wake-Robin� (1871), one of his most popular books.

 Burroughs also provided literary advice to Miss Adam. While in Washington, he had become a close friend of Walt Whitman, and in 1867 he published a book about “the good gray poet.â€� One day Adam wrote to say that she wanted to buy a copy of Whitman’s controversial “Leaves of Grass.â€�

Burroughs advised against it, believing as many people did that the book was too coarse for women. On the other hand, he told Adam that female readers sometimes grasped passages in Whitman more readily than men, and he suggested that she read his “Drum Taps� first.

Burroughs in retirement

 Eventually, the correspondence between John Burroughs and Sarah Adam came to an end. Burroughs left Washington and lived for the rest of his life on his farm near the Hudson River.

 In later years, Burroughs’ rustic cabin, “Slabsides,â€� in West Park, N.Y., became a shrine for literary pilgrims. He took on the appearance of a sage with his flowing white hair and beard. He was so popular that schoolchildren across the country formed John Burroughs societies.

In 1899, Burroughs traveled with the E. H. Harriman expedition to Alaska. In 1903, he visited Teddy Roosevelt at the White House, and he traveled with the president to Yellowstone. He went on camping trips with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone. Burroughs died in 1921, a world figure, having written some 30 books about nature.

Adam’s house still stands

Sarah Adam lived in North Canaan all her life. Born in 1836, she grew up in a house that still stands, next to the present day firehouse. This house was part of the ancestral family estate that included the 1751 Lawrence Tavern house. She never married but she had a large extended family.

 In 1863, Sarah traveled to Washington with her cousin, Sarah Walker of Lenox, who was married to David Davis, a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. The two Sarahs went riding with Mrs. Lincoln and met the president at a reception. Sarah Adam found Honest Abe to be “homelier than most men,â€� noting that “his pictures do him justice.â€� Burroughs also met the president during those years.

 In the 1870s,  Adam opened a boarding school for girls on the Lawrence house property in North Canaan. No doubt she instilled in her young students some of her love of nature. She was “very respected as a school teacherâ€� said Fred Hall, North Canaan ’s 101-year-old historian.

 Sarah Adam died in North Canaan in 1918. In recounting her long life, her obituary noted her many friends, her large family, her skill as a horsewoman, her meeting with Lincoln and her correspondence with Burroughs.

 Popular with female readers

Not long after Adam’s death, the letters that John Burroughs wrote to her were loaned by her niece, Mrs. S. W. Lyles of North Canaan, to Dr. Clara Barrus, the literary executor of the Burroughs estate. Dr. Barrus was writing the official biography of the naturalist.

 When “The Life and Letters of John Burroughsâ€� appeared in 1925, Dr. Barrus described Sarah Adams [sic] of North Canaan as “the first woman reader to write him about his essays,â€� adding, “Of what a host was she the forerunner!â€�

 It was true that women were particularly attracted to the writings of John Burroughs. During his career he had scores of female correspondents, including many famous ones, such as the journalist Ida Tarbell and the poet Emma Lazarus, author of “The New Colossusâ€� (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses ...â€�).

 Ahead of them all was Sarah Adam of North Canaan.

Mark Godburn is a bookseller in North Canaan.