Sophia Foord

Foord was the daughter of James Ford, the clerk of Norfolk County.[1] She lived nearby James Richardson.[1]

She was the first depositor at Dedham Savings.[2]

While living with the Alcott family in Concord, Massachusetts, she met Henry David Thoreau.[1] Despite being 15 years older than him, she fell in love with him.[1][3] She proposed marriage to him, but he declined.[1][3] She had feelings for him for many years, which she would write about in letters to Louisa May Alcott.[1][lower-alpha 1]

Foord spent the last years of her life in Dedham, living with her sister, Esther.[4] She died in 1885 and was buried in Brookdale Cemetery.[4]

Foord taught in the Dedham Middle School in 1833 before moving the Northhampton, Massachusetts to join the Transcendentalist Northampton Association of Education and Industry.[5] 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.[1] She lived with the Alcotts in Hillside in 1845.[1]

Ralph Waldo Emerson was so impressed with her teaching ability that he hired her to instruct his children.[1]

• Parr, James L. (2009). Dedham: Historic and Heroic Tales From Shiretown. The History Press. ISBN 978-1-59629-750-0.