Jaimee Joroff

In the wild places of Concord linger old Puritan superstitions and Transcendental possibilities. We begin in the year 1620 when, bearing sea-weary Puritan separatists, the Mayflower arrived off Cape Cod’s coast revealing what Pilgrim leader William Bradford noted as “a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts.”

To the Puritans, the Wilderness was the devil’s territory. Satan would not linger in the exposed coastal regions where the Puritans first settled and kept him at bay with devout prayer, but he was always there, in the wild forests, the swamps, the unexplored places, tempting them to leave the seaside settlements of early Massachusetts and stray from righteousness.

Test your knowledge with Concord Trivia!

In 2020 or early 2021, did you try to visit Concord, or leave it to go anywhere? If yes, you might have experienced global variants of fate cannonballing you into history’s category of “people who tried to go somewhere and couldn’t quite make it.”  And in this category, you would find First Lieutenant and Adjutant Welch Fusilier Frederick Mackenzie whose miserable attempted journey to Concord started in 1773, and like a stretching pandemic, never seemed to get better.

Test your knowledge of Concord history!

Test your knowledge of Concord!

Grab your shovel and a rope, we’re going to go dig up two bodies. It won’t take long; we just need their heads. We’ll start by making our way down the Battle Road from Concord Center towards the neighboring town of Lincoln, retracing the frantic footsteps of King George’s men as they fled back to Boston on April 19th, 1775. The unexpected battle at the North Bridge still ringing in their ears, the British troops and colonists were engaged in an 18-mile battle back to Boston, sometimes collectively referred to as “The Battle of Concord.” Along the road in Lincoln, near Hartwell’s Tavern, a colonist’s musket ball slammed into the head of a British solider. Legend says that, on impact, the soldier’s body levitated high into the air before crashing dead to the ground. Around him, four more British soldiers were struck down, blood seeping through their blood red jackets into the dirt of centuries now below our feet.

Amos Bronson Alcott was about to drown.  How could this be happening? Born on November 29th, 1799, he was the eldest son of a poor farmer from Wolcott, Connecticut, and he was only 19 years old! Straining to keep his head above water, Bronson could see his bag on the shore with the $100 he was bringing home to help pay his father’s debts. And what of his mother, who taught Bronson his ABCs by having him trace them on her dirt parlor floor, her warm memory in stark contrast to the rigid teacher in the one room schoolhouse Bronson attended until leaving at age 10 to work full-time on his father’s farm.

Test your knowledge with Concord Trivia!

Test your knowledge with Concord Trivia!

There are places where you can stand for a moment between worlds.  Concord Center’s Main Street is one of them. Over it, on April 19th, 1775, British officer Major John Pitcairn crossed from a world securely under English sovereignty and into one at war, fast on its way to American Independence.