{
    "byline": "Ben Goldfarb, bioGraphic",
    "charset": "UTF-8",
    "dir": null,
    "excerpt": "In 1859, a committee of farmers in Billerica, Massachusetts, having grown irked by a dam on the Concord River, hired a surveyor to justify its destruction. The dam, which powered a textile factory owned by an industrialist named Charles Talbot, was allegedly flooding their fields and spoiling their hay; now they wanted the wall and its reservoir gone. They hoped the surveyor\u2019s evidence would persuade a court to order its obliteration. The surveyor\u2014a conscientious, lushly bearded man of good repute\u2014set about plumbing the Concord\u2019s bottom, measuring its bridges and scrutinizing high-water marks. In truth, he didn\u2019t love the work,\u00a0describing\u00a0surveying as \u201cdrudgery\u201d in his journals. Henry David Thoreau\u2019s truest passion, of course, wasn\u2019t surveying land, but writing about it.",
    "lang": null,
    "length": 26266,
    "publishedTime": null,
    "siteName": null,
    "title": ""
}