Answer: B. Middlesex. On May 10, 1643, the Massachusetts General Court divided the Massachusetts Bay Colony into four shires: Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk. Middlesex Shire included areas then called Charlestown, Cambridge, Watertown, Sudbury, Concord, Woodborne [Jamaica Plain], Medford, and Lin Village [Reading]. 

Answer: C. 1791.  Given that you live in 1644, you’re going to have to keep holding your tongue or forking over your pence because, barring a miracle, you’re not going to make it until December 15, 1791, when the First Amendment to the Constitution added “The Freedom of Speech.” 

Answer: B. Authorized three local deputies to resolve small cases in town on behalf of the Court. As recorded in colony records, in 1652, the Massachusetts General Court authorized Concord men Captain Willard, M. Richard Griffin, and Thomas Brookes “to end small cases” in Concord.

Answer: D. Iron. As described in Shattuck’s A History of the Town of Concord, and in the Massachusetts Colony records, “A company was incorporated, on the 5th March, 1658, ‘to erect one or more iron-works in Concord.’” In 1660, the court granted Concord iron workers the right to dig and mine on land in the court’s possession. The Concord Iron Works was located in the area of modern-day Damon Mill and stretching into today’s Acton. “Bog iron” was mined in nearby bogs and transported to the Concord Iron Works for smelting. 

Answer: C. Teacher. As written in 1647 by the Massachusetts General Court, “it being one [of the] chief [projects] of ye ould deluder, Satan, to keepe men from the knowledge of ye Scriptures,” every town in Massachusetts that had “50 households, shall then forthwith appoint one [a teacher] [within] their townes to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read.” The teacher’s salary was paid by the inhabitants of the town. 

Answer: C and D. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau. Descended from William Hathorne (whose name appears frequently in colony records) and the infamous Salem witch trial judge John Hathorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne wove the early colonial history of America into many of his tales and short stories. Through his travels and explorations, Henry David Thoreau also picked up many early tales and recorded them in his journals and writings, such as Walden and Cape Cod. 

Answer: True! But not at the North Bridge site itself. A preserved piece of the 1775 version of the bridge hangs on display in the North Bridge Visitor Center on Liberty Street. 

Answer: B. The Concord River. If you also guessed the Assabet or the Sudbury Rivers, you get bonus points as both join the Concord River at different points. 

Answer: Anna Alcott. The eldest of the four Alcott sisters, Anna married John Pratt. When writing Little Women, Louisa May Alcott based Meg March on Anna, and John Brooke (Laurie’s tutor) on John Pratt.

Answer:

 A. Hillside Chapel = Bronson Alcott’s The Concord School of Philosophy at Orchard House

B. Bush = nickname for Ralph Waldo Emerson’s House on Cambridge Turnpike

C. Coolidge Castle: also a nickname for Ralph Waldo Emerson’s House on Cambridge Turnpike

D. Apple Slump = Orchard House (home of Louisa May Alcott and family)

E. The Gray Parsonage = The Old Manse. 

F. Hillside = The Wayside. The Alcott family lived here from 1845-1852 and called the house “Hillside”. When they sold the house to Nathaniel Hawthorne, he renamed it “The Wayside.” 

G. The Wright Tavern. Amos Wright was a hired barkeep during the ownership of Daniel Taylor. Jones and Munroe had consecutively owned the tavern before Taylor; and Taylor sold the tavern to Samuel Swann.