Answer: B. Six square miles.

Answer: True. In 1635, a “plantation” meant a place where settlers were allowed to establish a community. Condensed from Charles Banks’ 1830 history, The Planters of the Commonwealth: A Study of the Emigrants and Emigration in Colonial Time, primarily between 1620-1640, “when Englishmen left their island to emigrate to the North American continent, to begin a new life in the unexplored wilderness…the places to which they went were called ‘plantation’. From Maine on the extreme north to Virginia on the south the men who came to settle in this newly acquired territory adopted the name of ‘planters’ to distinguish themselves as men who had come to fulfill a national obligation. They were not planters in the agricultural sense, but in its spiritual significance. They came … to plant … a new nation to perpetuate under other skies the cultural development of Anglo-Saxon civilization.”

Answer: B. John Jack. As written in the 1880 Concord Guide Book, “The Old Hill Burying Ground stands directly behind the Catholic Church… and the most celebrated epitaph is that of John Jack, an old slave who died [a freeman] in town in 1773. This has been widely copied at home and abroad as a curious specimen of antithesis, and it is usually attributed to the pen of Daniel Bliss.” Visit Discover Concord online to read more about Daniel Bliss and John Jack in Victor Curran’s article, “Daniel Bliss and John Jack: Loyalty’s Cost, Freedom’s Price.” Discoverconcordma.com/articles/238-daniel-bliss-and-john-jack-loyaltys-cost-freedoms-price

Answer: A, B, D, and E. As shared in Renee Garrelick’s In the Days of Strawberries and Streetcars, the electric street trolley arrived in Concord in 1901. 

Answer: A. A hostler is someone who takes care of horses at an inn. This suggests you traveled to Concord in your horse and carriage.

Answer: D. Jo’s Boys, and How They Turned Out was published in 1886 and is the final book following the March sisters’ lives. (Little Women Married, and Little Women Wedded were real British titles for Little Women Part II). 

Answer: True. Although not the original bridge that was present on April 19, 1775, your son could ride over an 1874 replacement bridge that was built to mark the centennial of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. And he’s just in time, for, by 1888, this bridge would wash away. 

Answer: A. Rose quartz

Answer: A and D. In 1874 the Middlesex Central Railroad connected Concord to Lexington via Bedford. This section was abandoned in 1962 and is now a recreational rail trail. An amusement park existed at Walden Pond from 1866-1902. Although you could not dine at the Colonial Inn in 1886 (because it wasn’t opened under that name until 1900), and would have to wait twenty-six years until Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House opened as a museum in 1912, your trip has been a wonderful success; your in-laws think you’re the best, and you all get along forever. Well done.