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The quaint Massachusetts town of Concord has played a unique role in the revolutionary and literary history of New England and was once home to prominent Transcendentalists such as Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott and Thoreau.
Throughout its history Concord has been a symbol of liberty, of intellectual freedom and community ideals. The writer Henry James once called Concord ‘the biggest little town in America’, and the picturesque town’s prominence in the emerging history and literature of America is second to none.
Concord is situated at the confluence of the Sudbury and Assabet rivers in an area the Native Americans called ‘Musketaquid’. Here the Algonkian tribe or ‘spearfishers’, harvested crops and fished the rivers before British settlers arrived in around 1635. These settlers led by Peter Bulkeley and Simon Willard, bought the land for a sum of shells, tools and clothes. The peaceful and cordial negotiations between the settlers and the natives inspired the town’s name of Concord.
On April 19th 1775 Concord and the neighbouring town of Lexington were written into the history books when the British Army raided the town to cut off military supplies to the colonial militia. The militia engaged the soldiers at the North Bridge and the redcoats retreated. The Battle of Lexington and Concord was to be the first conflict of the American Revolution.
Concord’s moment in history was recorded by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Concord Hymn (1836), where he wrote of, ‘the shot heard around the world’, although strictly speaking this shot was heard first on Lexington Common.
Emerson was the most influential American writer of the 19th century and his presence in the town attracted other writers and thinkers. From the 1830s Concord became an intellectual centre and a new cosmopolitan community grew up around the Transcendentalist movement. Among these intuitive thinkers led by Emerson, were Henry David Thoreau, Nathanial Hawthorne, Amos Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May Alcott.
The homes where they lived are mostly preserved today as Concord’s leading visitor attractions. Orchard House was where the Alcotts lived and provided some of the inspiration for Louisa May Alcotts' Little Women. The Alcotts also lived at the Wayside nearby before selling it to Nathanial Hawthorne who lived here until his death in 1864. Opposite Concord Museum is the house where Emerson lived, which is still owned by the Emerson family today and is open to visitors as a private museum - The Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial House. Outside Concord on the banks of Walden Pond is the small cabin where Henry Thoreau lived a semi hermetic existence.
Concord’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is one of the most literary resting places in America, buried here on Author’s ridge are Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau along with sculptor Daniel Chester French.
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