Answer: b)  U.S. Consul to Liverpool.

Answer: b) Beans. Of the bean crop that he planted, Thoreau wrote in Walden, “I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antæus. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows. This was my curious labor all summer.” [Walden, Ch. 7]

Answer: All of them! While the minuteman farmer seems a likely emblem for military units, its image was also used by suffragettes. In a 1911 flyer titled “To the Farmers and Fruit Growers of California,” suffragette Milicent Shinn wrote, “In the War of American Independence, it was the ‘embattled farmers’ at Concord Bridge that made the first stand and fired the first shot against Taxation without Representation. The Battle Is Not Yet Fully Won. There is still one class of American citizens that is taxed without any voice of their own, and governed by officials they have had no part in choosing and laws they have had no part in making. Your own mother, your wife and sister are that class.”

Answer: c) Making stone tools. Used by the Pennacook tribe who inhabited Concord prior to the town’s founding in 1634, flint knapping involves chipping away at certain stones to fashion them into tools. Examples of these stone tools may be seen in the Concord Museum, or, if you are lucky, occasionally dug up around town.

Answer: a) Fishing weir. Modern day Concord Center was built over the mill brook. You can spot the mill brook still running its course through town. Places to look include at the back of the parking lot behind Tuttle’s Livery (45 Walden Street) and behind Main Street Café (42 Main Street) near the Keyes Road Parking lot.

Answer: d) Tending his garden. Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne married on July 9, 1842. Following the ceremony, they immediately moved to Concord, MA, where they rented the Old Manse on Monument Street. As a wedding present, Henry David Thoreau planted a large vegetable garden for the Hawthornes in the field in front of the Manse. In August of that same year, Hawthorne wrote in his journal, “I find that I am a good deal interested in our garden, although, as it was planted before we came here, I do not feel the same affection for the plants that I should if the seed had been sown by my own hands. It is something like nursing and educating another person’s children.”

Answer: c) Powering a threshing machine. Originally done by handheld flails, threshing was the act of removing grains from the stalk and chaff. In the 19th century, threshing machines arrived to help farmers in this arduous task. They could be powered by steam or horses walking on treadmills, a practice still used by some Amish farmers in America.

Answer: e) Henry David Thoreau in Autumnal Tints. Looking for a great place to leaf peep in Concord? Visit Thoreau’s Walden Pond in the fall.  

Answer: c) Pompion. Bonus: Grown from seeds and on a flowering plant, pumpkins are considered fruits.

Answer: a) Louisa May Alcott’s story “The Candy Country.” This story starts off sweetly, with a little girl named Lily being whisked away by the wind to a sugar-based land whose inhabitants are built entirely of candy. However, the story quickly takes a dark turn as Lily starts to eat her way through the population.