Helen Thoreau, John Thoreau, Jr., and Sophia Thoreau were his siblings. The young Thoreau, influenced by his mother's interest in nature, would explore his local environment, setting the foundation for his lifelong connection with the natural world. In "The Days of Henry Thoreau" Harding wrote, "His mother, eager to foster a love of nature in her children, often took them out to the dooryard to call their attention to the songs of the wild birds" (19). Henry's formal education started at Concord Academy from 1828 to 1833 and was to prepare him for Harvard University. However, his interests were else ware as Harding notes, "Thoreau himself was seemingly more interested in the outdoors than in school and spent all his spare time in Concord's woods and meadows and on her rivers and ponds" (The Days of Henry Thoreau 30). He started attending Harvard in 1833. It was a professor by the name of Edward T. Channing, who influenced Thoreau's early skills of expression through writing.
After his graduation in 1837, he started attending meetings with Transcendentalist's, whose ideologies most significantly influenced Thoreau's literary work. A major tenant of the movement was, "They believed in something that transcended the limits of sensory experience – in other words, something that transcended materialism" (Jacobus 173). A close relationship started developing between Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson during this time. Emerson too, was very influential in Thoreau's writings. On the advice of Emerson, Thoreau started keeping a journal. Little did he know how his journals would keep him in the public's eye over the course of his life and long after his death. Later, Ralph Emerson, in a letter to William Emerson, wrote, "Thoreau is a scholar & a poet & as full of buds of promise as a young apple tree" (Petrulionis 15). It was at this time, he changed the order of his first and middle name and referred to himself as Henry David.
