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  Helen Thoreau, Henry Thoreau's older sister, was best known around Concord as an ardent abolitionist. Indeed, the entire Thoreau family was well known in abolitionist circles. It is safe to assume that the Thoreau's saw slavery as the greatest evil of their time.In 1837, Helen was one of the founders of the Concord Woman's Anti-Slavery Society, as were her mother and Aunt Maria. Mrs. Thoreau "hosted reformers of every kind" at her boarding house, and as a result, Helen and her siblings met many of the era's leading abolitionists, including Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker. Mrs. Thoreau's passion for the cause greatly influenced all of her children, but Helen's zeal for abolition easily surpassed everyone else in the family.
 Of course, not everyone in Concord was as passionate about abolition; abolitionists were more often than not regarded as cranks or troublemakers. An 1851 issue of The Concord Freeman, reporting on an anti-slavery meeting reads:
"The speeches were characterized with the usual wildness of imagination which generally emanates from [anti-slavery] gatherings." This sort of attitude, however, did not deter Helen Thoreau from being whole-heartedly committed to the cause. She and her family hid runaway slaves in their home in Concord, and her brother, Henry, often escorted the fugitives to the railroad station so they could safely escape to Canada. The Thoreau's also boycotted Southern products like sugar, molasses and cotton clothing.
Henry Thoreau immediately penned a letter to the Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison's influential anti-slavery newspaper. Thoreau's letter was a review of Phillip's lecture, and he also used the letter to defend Phillip's right to speak at the Lyceum, regardless of the topic. The letter appeared in the paper on March 28. Sister Helen, no doubt pleased with Phillip's lecture, and proud of her brother's letter to the editor, wrote to a friend that "The battle for freedom of speech in the Concord Lyceum had been won." Helen kept an "anti-slavery scrapbook" and filled it with articles, poetry and literature, all cut from the leading abolitionist newspapers of the day! The Liberator, the National Anti-Slavery Standard and Frederick Douglass' North Star were all read by Helen and she saved anything that caught her eye in those weekly papers. Helen started the scrapbook in 1837 and continued it until 1843 (photo of its index above). There are literally hundreds of clippings with articles written by Garrison, Phillips, Douglass and Lydia Maria Child. Helen also saved abolitionist poetry from the papers and the anti-slavery works of Longfellow, Whittier and Bryant are all in her scrapbook. Helen's interest in reform did not stop at abolition. She also saved clippings on temperance, hydropathy and women's health issues. Like most reformers of the era, she truly believed that "all men are created equal" and the plight of other minorities besides slaves concerned her deeply. In 1839, her mother and others called a public meeting in Concord to protest President Van Buren's relocation of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia to Federal reservations. Because of this meeting, Emerson wrote a letter to Van Buren on behalf of the Cherokee. A clipping about Emerson's letter is in Helen's scrapbook. It is assumed that she, too, sympathized with the Cherokee plight. But first and foremost, Helen considered herself an abolitionist. There is a letter, written by Helen during her final illness, in which she muses on what the abolitionist cause meant to her. She is characteristically humble;
"Oh how much has anti-slavery done for me, and how little I have done for it! I wanted health, that I might keep school and in this way do something for the cause I love so much."Perhaps Helen had plans for a Negro school, or maybe she wanted to use her status as a teacher to spread the anti-slavery message. We will never know.
Helen Thoreau died on June 14, 1849. She was 36 years old. Tuberculosis took her life, as it later would her father, her Uncle Charles, and of course, her brother Henry.
Helen's obituary in a local newspaper read:
Our friend, Miss Thoreau, was an abolitionist. Endowed by nature with tender sensibilities, quick to feel for the woes of others, the cause of the slave met with ready response in her heart... She had the patience to investigate truth...and the moral courage to act in conformity with her convictions however unpopular these convictions might be to the community around her..." Perhaps Henry Thoreau should have the last word about his older sister. In a letter to Helen in 1840, he wrote what would be not only a fitting tribute to her, but also a testimony to their relationship:
"This much, at least, our kindred temperment of mind and body - and long 'family-airity' - have done for us, that we already find ourselves standing on a solid and natural footing with respect to one another..."
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In the spring of 1845, the curators of the Concord Lyceum (two of whom were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau) invited Wendell Phillips to speak on abolition. His speech on March 11 greatly offended some of Concord's more conservative citizens. They thought the Lyceum was no place for an anti-slavery lecture, even though the Lyceum's mission was the edification and education of Concord's citizens! Two of the Lyceum curators quit in protest of Phillip's appearance.
Her funeral was held at home in the Texas House with both the Unitarian and Trinitarian ministers in attendance. Henry sat in stony silence throughout the service, but as Helen's coffin was about to be taken away, he produced a small music box, wound it and set it to playing a final tune for his beloved sister. All in attendance sat quietly until the music was finished. Helen was buried in the New Hill Burying Ground (now called Sleepy Hollow) next to her brother John, who had died seven years before.