Peter Hutchinson (1799/1880 – 1882) was the last African American owner of the Robbins house and farm, and was called “the ablest common laborer I have ever known” by one of his townsmen. Emerson’s poems “Peter’s Field” and “Dirge” were set on Peter Hutchinson’s farm overlooking Great Meadows. Thoreau expressed respect for Peter Hutchinson’s knowledge of Concord’s woods, fields, and wildlife throughout his journals.
In 2013, the Robbins House and the Friends of Sleepy Hollow provided a marker for Peter Hutchinson and his family at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord MA.
The dedication ceremony for the Peter Hutchinson family headstone took place on Saturday, November 9th, 2013 in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord. Our featured speakers were Robert A. Gross, Professor of Early American History, University of Connecticut, and The Honorable Milton Wright. Dillon Bustin performed 19th-century spirituals.
![Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? We have you covered with a little Robbins house trivia. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a poem entitled Peter’s Field. Peter’s Field most likely referenced Peter Hutchinson, who was the last African American owner of The Robbins House. Peter purchased the home in 1852 and lived with his wife, Nancy, and several of their children in the home until 1868. Emerson described Peter’s farm, and by extension the original area of farmland attached to The Robbins House out in the Great Field like this:
KNOWS he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn?]
That field by spirits bad and good,
By Hell and Heaven is haunted,
And every rood in the hemlock wood
I know is ground enchanted.
[In the long sunny afternoon
The plain was full of ghosts:
I wandered up,
I wandered down,
Beset by pensive hosts.
For in those lonely grounds the sun
Shines not as on the town,
In nearer arcs his journeys run,
And nearer stoops the moon.
There in a moment I have seen
The buried Past arise;
The fields of Thessaly grew green,
Old gods forsook the skies.
Happy Reading!](http://robbinshouse.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)