By the middle of the nineteenth century, Concord had just turned 200 years old and had a population of around 2,000. Always a farming town, by the 1840s, Concord’s agricultural economy was in flux, and the crops and farms that had been so important to the town in its first 200 years were evolving. By the dawn of the twentieth century, Concord agriculture had changed in many ways, from the people who were farming to the crops they were growing.
In the early 1600s, the first taverns opened in New England to serve refreshments, specifically alcoholic beverages, to locals and travelers. Many taverns also served food, and some, designated as inns, provided shelter and beds to travelers passing through.
The test of a true classic is its longevity and influence. Louisa May Alcott could never have imagined that Little Women, the novel for girls she didn’t want to write, would have such an impact.
Ralph Waldo Emerson lived in Concord for most of his life and probably explored almost every inch of it on foot. As he once said, “I go through Concord as through a park.” Today, we can follow in the footsteps of the “Sage of Concord.”
On April 22, 2023, we have many reasons to celebrate. Led by Henry D. Fairfax, Concord Academy’s 11th head of school, the school is observing its 100th year of educating young people. It’s our birthday—and it’s also Earth Day!
On August 31, 1922, Headmistress Elsie Garland Hobson placed an advertisement in the New York Times. It read: “Concord Academy: A small boarding and day school for girls in the historic town of Concord, Mass., situated on the beautiful Samuel Hoar estate. The school life is planned to develop the qualities of initiative and self-reliance, to stimulate intellectual curiosity, and to give a thorough preparation for college.”
Shortly after sunrise, Reuben Brown crouched on a hill just outside the center of Lexington, Massachusetts. He was out of breath from his six-mile ride from Concord, and what he saw didn’t make him breathe any easier. More than 700 British troops were on the road, and 70-odd provincial militia were all that stood between them and Concord.
In 1774 when Parliament passed the Boston Port Act in an attempt to break the Massachusetts colonists of their resistance to crown policy, it also authorized English General and acting Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage to undertake any military measures necessary to help bring the colony under control. In late winter and early spring of 1775, Gage received a series of dispatches from London ordering him to not only arrest the leaders of Massachusetts’ opposition party but to launch a major strike against the apparently growing provincial stockpiles of weapons and munitions located throughout eastern Massachusetts.
Oral and written history records are like dust; grains disappear over time—burned, blown away, forgotten. In some cases, just enough original particles remain that, when swept together, give a foothold for stories like this one.
Stand in Concord Center, on Lexington Road, with your back to the Old Hill Burying Ground and your gaze fixed on the gold-domed First Parish building across the street. Here you are standing in the area of Concord’s first meeting house. Below your feet are grains of dust walked over centuries before by Concord residents such as Puritan John Jones, the first minister of Concord. And what happened when he left this spot became something New England history tried to bury.