David Henry Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts on July 12, 1817. He was the third born of four children to John and Cynthia Thoreau.  He studied at Concord Academy from age eleven to sixteen. He then attended Harvard University, his grandfathers alma mater, and graduated in 1837 at the age of twenty. His education was paid for by the money his father made as a pencil manufacturer along with contributions from his older siblings salaries. After graduating, he decided to legally change his name to Henry David. However, at the age of 18 he contracted tuberculosis and suffered from recurring incidents throughout his life. His first year out of college, he worked in his fathers pencil factory for a year. He then decided to open a school in Concord, alongside his brother John, and taught there from 1838-1841, until his brother became sick and died of lock-jaw. He later worked as a handyman at odd jobs throughout Concord and assisted in the family's pencil manufacture business. At age 25, Thoreau became tired of materialistic living and decided to build a house in the woods and records his observations and thoughts on living simply. He built a small home a mile and a half from the center of Concord, on the shore of Walden pond, for twenty-eight dollars.about a mile and a half from the center of Concord. He moved in on July 4, 1845, the day before the anniversary of his brother's death. He stayed for two years, only traveling into town about once a week for supplies.  During this time he wrote a book referred to as Walden or Life In the Woods. This book is a collection of writings about his life in the woods. While Walden gained recognition for Thoreau, "Resistance to Civil Government”, published in 1849, became his most famous essay and impacted humanity worldwide. This essay was a result in an overnight stay in jail in 1846, when he refused to pay his taxes in protest against the Mexican War and the extension of slavery. Ironically, his most famous work was published anonymously. Thankfully, people who knew Thoreau and his writting, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, could identify this work as his. The essay was posthumously titled "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience." Aside from influencing two major civil rights icons such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.,  in the 1940's it was read by the Danish resistance, in the 1950's it was cherished by people who opposed McCarthyism, in the 1960's it was influential in the struggle against South African apartheid, and in the 1970's it was discovered by a new generation of anti-war activists. Thoreau continued to travel and lecture for the remainder of his life. However, when his tuberculosis worsened, Thoreau became aware that he was dying, and  returned to Concord and die on May 6, 1862.