New England, Past and Present

Along with Lexington, Concord was the birthplace of the American Revolution. The 1937 book then says "it was a haven for poets, authors, naturalists, and philosopher" during the "Golden Age" of American literature. This involved Emerson and Thoreau. I hate Emerson and Thoreau. I was tricked into this motor tour!

The town never really had any industry, so according to the 1937 book it's pretty much the same as it was in colonial days. The business district rings the Green (and still does today), and fancy houses stand along the Concord River (also still true). Nathaniel Hawthorne (&another one of my favorite authors& - I have terrible taste in American literature according to the 1937 book) once said that "he lived beside [the river] for weeks before discovering which way it flowers," so sluggish is the river's current. The book praises the Concord houses for "beautifully proportioned doorways and panelled interiors that are a heritage of eighteenth-century craftsmanship," and explains that beyond the cluster of the town are farms. 

In 1635, five years after the settling of Boston, a fur trader named Simon Willard and the Reverend Peter Bulkeley (I choose to believe they were lovers, that's just how I roll) led about a dozen families to the site of Concord, which at the time was a Native American village called Musketaquid. The knot of Boston settlers bought six square miles of land from the Native Americans for the price of garments, hatchets, knives, and cloth. They sealed the deal "by smoking the pipe of peace with the Indian chieftains." The town was named Concord to commemorate this deal, and the 1937 book tells me that the Concord townspeople and the Native Americans were BFFs ever after. 

The first few winters in Concord were hard, but the settlement continued to slowly grow. By the end of the seventeenth century, it was a county seat. By August 1774, it was an important enough town that the first county convention to protest Parliament met there, followed by the First Provincial Congress in August and the Second Provincial Congress starting in March 1775 (this Congress adjourned when the Revolution broke out down the street). Because of its status as a Congressional seat, military stores were kept in Concord, which was why it was the focal point of the British attack in April 1775. On April 19, 1775, Dr. Samuel Prescott and William Dawes arrived in Concord with the message that the British were coming (Paul Revere was captured before he could get there). Concord Minutemen met the British forces at Old North Bridge, where shots were exchanged, marking the formal beginning of the American Revolution. 

A siege of Boston followed, which caused so many Bostonians to flee to Concord that they actually called Boston town meetings there. Harvard held its classes in Concord while its campus was being used as barracks for the American army. Later, Concord was the seat of Shays's Rebellion. 

After the Revolution, culture blossomed in Concord. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote lots of stuff in Concord and revived Transcendentalism (a movement with an unnecessarily long name). In case you want to know who else belong to the T. group: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Franklin B. Sanborn, William Ellery Channing, Margeret Fuller, and Elizabeth Peabody. And Henry David Thoreau, Emerson's "intimate friend" wrote "Walden" on the shores of Walden Pond. Finally, Amos Bronson Alcott opened his School of Philosophy in a building known as Hillside Chapel. This left "his more practical wife and daughters [to] wrestle...with the humdrum problem of making ends meet." Mr. Alcott's daughter Louisa May wrote to help supplement the income (including "Little Women"). Other Concord authors: Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop) and Jane Austin (not to be confused with Jane Austen; Jane Austin wrote "Nameless Nobleman." In case you know that book). 

The inhabitants of Concord weren't just writers; they were also scientists. Harrison Gray Dyer erected the first telegraph line in the country, and William Monroe made the country's first lead pencils. In 1853, Ephraim Bull bred the Concord grape, which spurred the commercial production of "table grapes" in America.