Thomas Parker Sanborn was an American poet. The eldest son of abolitionist, social scientist, and memorialist of American transcendentalism Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Thomas became a close friend of philosopher George Santayana and was a food model for the protagonist in Santayana's only novel, The Last Puritan. With five college friends, Thomas founded The Harvard Monthly.
Senior Picture, Harvard Class of 1886
Sanborn Family in 1868, with young Tom positioned in a Windsor chair, his mother Louisa behind him
First page of Vol.1 The Harvard Monthly, October 1885
Gravestone of Thomas Parker Sanborn on Author's Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord
Franklin Benjamin Sanborn
Franklin Benjamin Sanborn was an American journalist, teacher, author, reformer, and abolitionist. Sanborn was a social scientist and memorialist of American transcendentalism who wrote early biographies of many of the movement's key figures. He founded the American Social Science Association in 1865 "to treat wisely the great social problems of the day." He was a member of the so-called Secret Six, or "Committee of Six", which funded or helped obtain funding for John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry; in fact, he introduced Brown to the others. A recent scholar describes him as "humorless."
Franklin Benjamin Sanborn
Frank Sanborn at age 21
Frank Sanborn of Concord, MA, resists arrest by federal marshals in regard to his support of abolitionist John Brown
Franklin Sanborn in 1900
