Answer: c) Under the Lilacs. Published ten years after Little Women, Under the Lilacs is a children’s novel about a circus runaway, Ben Brown, his dog Sancho, and sisters Bab and Betty Moss who take Ben and Sancho under their wings. 

Answer: Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House located at 399 Lexington Road. Louisa’s father, Amos Bronson Alcott, purchased the property in 1857 (eleven years before Louisa wrote Little Women). It came with an apple orchard of over 40 trees, ten woodland acres, a well, two dilapidated houses (one, a c. 17^th century Manor House, and the other an early 18th century tenant house), and several ruinous outbuildings. Bronson did extensive repairs and renovations, including moving the tenant house and attaching it to the back of the main house. While the apple orchard inspired Bronson to call the dwelling “Orchard House,” Louisa jokingly referred to the sloping and uneven combined house as “Apple Slump,” the name of a popular dessert in which the batter was poured on top of cut up apples and “slumped” in all directions after baking. Orchard House is now a museum and while it is temporarily closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, visit their website for fascinating articles, virtual tours, and more. And if you would like to enjoy an Apple Slump dessert, order the Little Women Cookbook online at louisamayalcott.org. 

Answer: b) Henry David Thoreau. While cooking a fish on the shore of Fairhaven Pond, sparks from Thoreau’s fire caught the dry grass, traveling through root systems and taking off faster than Thoreau could extinguish it. 

Answer: a) November. From Little Women, “’November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year,’ said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden.”

Answer: False, but if you guessed true you were very close because the first pasteurized juice was made from Concord grapes whose seeds had been developed and sold by Concordian Ephraim Wales Bull. Bull’s disease resistant seeds were planted throughout much of America, including some that ended up in the garden of a New Jersey dentist, Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch. Using his Concord grapes, Welch produced the first pasteurized juice. “Welch’s” became a company, and its headquarters is now located in Concord, Massachusetts. 

Answer: b) On duty. Named after the French word for throat (gorge), gorgets were decorative pieces worn around the necks of commissioned officers when they were on duty. The gorget might be engraved with regimental affiliations, coats of arms, or other designs meaningful to the wearer. 

Answer: Meg = Margaret; Jo = Josephine; Beth = Elizabeth; Amy is just Amy. 

Answer: I am a Brown Bess musket, the standard infantry weapon of the British Army for over 100 years until being replaced in the mid-19^th century. I had several names and forms, and my nickname “Brown Bess” appeared in print in 1784.  

Answer: a) Laundry

Answer: d) Urine. In addition to setting dye, urine could be helpful in removing stains from everyday laundry.  As written in The Compleat Servant-Maid, a 1677 guide by Hannah Wolley, “Before that you suffer it to be washed, lay it all night in urine, the next day rub all the spots in the urine as if you were washing in water; then lay it in more urine another night and then rub it again, and so do till you find they be quite out.”