USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Concord > Historic Concord, a handbook of its story and its memorials > Part 2
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For a number of years past, the graves of these sol- diers have been decorated each May by British veter- ans from Boston, escorted by Americans. The exer- cises, and the carrying of the two flags side by side across the bridge to decorate the Minute-Man statue, are very significant of the new ties between the two nations.
One sometimes meets the statement that the little space that holds these graves belongs to the British Government. This is true only symbolically, in the sense in which Rupert Brooke, English soldier in France in 1914, wrote prophetically of his death the following year:
'If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England.'
The land belongs to the town of Concord.
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i . Horny,
Graves of British Soldiers
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Historic Concord
One is now at the Concord River, the current of which is always sluggish. Hawthorne claimed that he lived beside it for weeks before he learned which way it flowed. (The foundation of his boathouse is to be seen upstream from the bridge.) For many years there was no bridge here, as Emerson wrote in 1836:
'Time the ruined bridge hath swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.'
The present bridge (a cement structure imitating the wooden one) now crosses the river for the sole purpose of viewing the Minute-Man statue; but the original road ran farther, parallel to the river on land so low that it was often flooded. That was the road which Captain Parsons and his redcoats followed. A num- ber of rods beyond the bridge another road (now also gone) ran up the hill. By that road the Americans marched down to the Fight.
For the story of the Fight, see pages 65 ff. To understand it here on the ground one needs to remem- ber that after the retreating Americans had crossed the bridge and passed out of sight, to wait reinforce- ments, the British occupied the ground. Captain Par- sons, with his men, marched to the Barrett farm. Cap- tain Laurie, now in command, posted his companies, one at the farther end of the bridge, and two on the hillsides beyond, to protect Parsons' retreat. At the return of the Americans, these companies drew to- gether, crossed the bridge again, and were drawn up in column by Captain Laurie, with the intention of maintaining a continuous fire by a method called 'Street Firing,' usual in the days of single-fire muzzle- loading guns. Lieutenant Sutherland and two men crossed the wall into the Manse field, to shoot at the provincials. (This is clearly shown in the model of
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the Fight, at the Antiquarian House.) The British volley was probably fired from the very entrance of the bridge when the Americans were about sixty yards away, the effective range of the flintlock smoothbore of those days. Isaac Davis and Abner Hosmer, Acton captain and private, were killed. On the spot where Davis fell there long grew a bush. "Tis the burning bush,' wrote Emerson, 'where God spake for his people.' I
On that spot now stands Daniel Chester French's Minute-Man statue, typifying the men who took their guns with them to church and field. So this alert figure, leaving his plow, prepares to fight. If this was not already the best-known statue in America, the use of it by the Government as a symbol in the Second World War has made it so. On the base is the opening stanza of Emerson's 'Concord Hymn,' written in 1836 for the dedication of the monument across the bridge.
'By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.'
The lines about the fallen bridge, previously quoted, are from the second stanza of the same hymn.
The statue was made when French was a resident of Concord: he was then but twenty-five years old, and this was his first important work. Referring to his residence and to Emerson's verses, it was said at the time of the dedication that few towns could furnish
I One sometimes meets the statement that the British fired from the hip. That is easily disproved by any book of tactics of the period. The diorama at the Antiquarian House shows the exact disposition - the front rank kneeling, the middle rank stooping, the rear rank upright, and all firing from the shoulder. The model is carefully worked out in every detail.
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a poet, a sculptor, and an occasion. At that celebra- tion in 1875, while George William Curtis was the orator of the day, Emerson made a brief address, in the course of which he said, 'The thunderbolt falls on an inch of ground, but the light of it fills the hori- zon.'
Buttrick House and Monument. Returning from the Battleground to Monument Street, and turning away from the village, the visitor crosses the river by the later bridge and, a furlong beyond, turns to the left onto Liberty Street.1 On the right he first passes the old Buttrick house, still in possession of the family, which has held much of the land hereabouts since Wil- liam Buttrick settled on it in 1635. (The house is not open to the public.) Taking the left road at the fork the visitor will see, in the wall on the left, the sculp- tured relief to Major John Buttrick, who from his own farm led the march to the bridge. Following Liberty Street the visitor next sees, on the right, the tablet in the wall marking the field in which the provincials gathered for the attack. In those days the view was not obstructed by trees, and the men could see the smoke rising from the town, prompting Joseph Hos- mer to ask the famous question, 'Will you let them burn the town down?' [See pages 60, 65.] It was in this field that the discarded gunflints were found
I Instead of turning onto Liberty Street, the visitor may first fol- low Monument Street farther, past the Fenn School for younger boys (right), and then over the shoulder of Punkatasset Hill. Al- most at the crest of the road, on the left, is the Hunt Farm, where the militia waited for reinforcements before the Fight. A mile or so farther on, on the right, is the farm where William Brewster, naturalist, wrote his journals. He was a different observer from Thoreau, more scientific and less imaginative. The two books pub- lished from his journals after his death, 'October Farm' and 'Con- cord River,' are of much interest.
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[page 64]. A number of these are to be seen at the Antiquarian House.
Proceeding along Liberty Street, one comes to Lowell Road, and can return by it to the town (turn- ing left) or go straight on to the Barrett farm. (For Lowell Road, see the next section.)
LOWELL ROAD AND BARRETT'S MILL ROAD
Lowell Road leaves the Square by Deacon White's corner of the Colonial Inn. Immediately on the left is the Christian Science Church, enlarged from the old dwelling of Deacon Nehemiah Ball, whose disapproval of Thoreau's gentle methods as a teacher caused the latter to whip a few pupils and then resign. A few rods farther on, on the right, is the tablet to commemorate the supposed site of the house of Peter Bulkeley, one of the founders of the town. The road presently trav- erses a long causeway and crosses Red Bridge, still so called because it once was wooden, and painted red. From the bridge one can see, to the left, Egg Rock, where the Sudbury and Assabet join to form the Con- cord River. The road swings left just as it is joined by Liberty Street at the spot where Captain Parsons reached it [pages 14, 63, 68]. He came, however, by a road, now gone, that skirted the river.
As the visitor follows the curve of Lowell Road to the right, he sees above him, on the right, the pic- turesque old house (its two parts at an angle) of Ed- mund Hosmer, friend of Emerson. Proceeding, in half a mile he comes to Hildreth's Corner, where he should note the handsome Hildreth house behind its fence. At this point he takes Barrett's Mill Road, to the left.
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In half a mile he comes, on the right, to Barrett's Mill, once owned by Deacon Thomas Barrett [page 62], whose son set up there during the Revolution a factory for muskets. Going on he passes Strawberry Hill Road as it turns off to the right. The next house on the right is the old Revolutionary farmhouse of Colonel James Barrett.
On the day of the Fight, Colonel Barrett was very busy on horseback in various parts of the town, until on the hill above the bridge he gave the order to the American troops to march, the order which brought about the Fight. [For him and the happenings at the house, see pages 48, 63-65.]
Returning to Lowell Road, the visitor may follow it to the left for a mile and a half, when he will see, on the right, the entrance to Middlesex School, a modern preparatory school for boys, of which the handsome buildings and grounds are worth an in- spection. He will then return to the Square by the way he came.
BEDFORD STREET
Bedford Street, which leaves the Square between the Townhouse and the Catholic Church, leads (like Lowell Road, Sudbury Road, Lexington Road, and Cambridge Turnpike) to the town for which it is named.
The Alcotts once lived in the house behind the Townhouse, and there died the third daughter, Eliza- beth, whose character is so sweetly, and truly, de- picted as 'Beth' in 'Little Women.' At the moment of her death her mother and her sister Louisa, sitting by her side, both believed that they saw a 'light mist ascend from her body, and vanish.
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Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. At the turn of the street begins a cemetery whose farther section is known as 'Sleepy Hollow,' a name which was given to it before it was taken into the burying ground. Its peculiar conformation, the flat amphitheater surrounded by steep glacial ridges, had long suggested the feeling of romantic seclusion which gave it the name, possibly taken from Washington Irving's 'Legend of Sleepy Hollow.' Hawthorne and his wife liked to linger here. An old road led to the spot on which they planned to build a 'castle,' where now is his grave. Emerson describes sitting in Sleepy Hollow in October, 1837, 'to hear the harmless roarings of the sunny South wind.' And Hawthorne, in August, 1842, found Mar- garet Fuller there, 'meditating or reading.' The Hol- low was taken into the older cemetery in 1855, Emerson delivering the address, the younger Ellery Channing the poem, and Frank B. Sanborn writing the hymn.
The Hollow is best entered between the brick pillars holding iron gates bearing the name. One comes al- most immediately to a fork in the road; the left-hand road leads, again almost at once (on the right), to the Melvin Memorial by Daniel Chester French, erected to three brothers, dead in the Civil War, by a fourth, who survived it. The evergreen setting en- hances the purity of the marble and the lofty expres- sion of patriotism in the central panel - an emblem- atic figure which seems to emerge from the stone be- tween the folds of the American flag.I
Returning to the fork in the road, one passes be- tween steep banks into the Hollow itself. The level bottom, now covered with graves, was once a corn- field. On the farther side is the famous ridge where
I There is a replica of this central panel in the Metropolitan Mu- seum, New York.
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lie buried Concord's literary galaxy. Following the road as it curves to the left, the visitor comes to the foot of the ridge, and climbing by a winding path, to- ward the right, comes at the top first upon the grave of Hawthorne, on the left. With no other inscription than just the name Hawthorne on a small low head- stone, he lies near other members of his family. His wife, however, is buried in London where she died. [For Hawthorne, see pages 91 ff.]
Opposite the Hawthorne plot is the one for the Thoreau family, the children simply designated by small stones, John, Henry, Helen, Sophia. [See pages 86-91.]
Next is the Alcott plot, the children again desig- nated by small stones. Louisa's grave, marked L. M. A. but also by her full name, is decorated each Memorial Day because she was a nurse in the Civil War. The father is A. B. A. (Amos Bronson); the · mother A. M. A. (Abigail May); 'Amy' is A. M. N. (Abba May Nieriker, who actually was buried abroad); 'Beth' is E. S. A. (Elizabeth Sewall). 'Meg' (Anna Bronson Alcott, who married John Pratt) lies close at hand with her husband. [For the Alcotts, see pages 81-86.]
Farther along is the grave of 'Margaret Sidney,' Mrs. Daniel Lothrop (Harriet Mulford Stone) [pages 37, 95]. Her 'Five Little Peppers' books have been widely popular.
Emerson's grave is reached by following the ridge path still farther, until one reaches the enclosure (within chains and granite posts) containing the irreg- ular, pointed mass of rose-quartz, in the face of which is set a small tablet, difficult to read, with his lines ex- pressing so perfectly his feeling about himself:
'The passive master lent his hand
To the vast soul which o'er him planned.'
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[For Emerson see pages 73-81.] He lies here sur- rounded by those who meant so much to him in life: his mother; his two wives; his beloved little Waldo,
'The hyacinthine boy for whom Morn well might break and April bloom.'
Here also lies Emerson's aunt, Mary Moody Emerson [page 74], whose stone bears his characterization of her:
'She gave wise counsels. It was the privilege of certain boys to have this immeasurably high standard indicated to their childhood, a blessing which nothing else in education could supply.'
Below and to the left of the foot of the path which here leads downward, is found the boulder with the tablet to Ephraim Wales Bull, the breeder of the Concord Grape. The inscription, 'He sowed, others reaped,' too well indicates the fate of the man who benefited millions, yet who died in poverty [page 38].
Turning back from this point, and following to the right the driveway that leads downward, one comes to the lot of the Hoar family, some of them nationally known. The founder, John [page 45], is not buried here; the plot holds a later Samuel, 'Squire Hoar,' and his children. Samuel was a noted and upright lawyer, who defended the cause of the slave in South Carolina. Like Deacon White [page 4], in his day he prevented Sunday travel past his Main Street home. (A Concord farmer, ruefully surveying his grain laid flat by a thunderstorm, was heard to wonder whether, if the storm had come on Sunday, Squire Hoar would have tried to stop it.) His children at- tained to considerable note. Elizabeth was engaged to Charles Emerson, who died before their marriage; Emerson always regarded her as a sister. Her epitaph
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is well worth reading. Ebenezer Rockwood was at- torney-general under President Grant. He had a keen and biting wit. George Frisbie was long United States senator from Massachusetts.
Many other stones in the cemetery are interesting, while as a whole Sleepy Hollow has a peaceful beauty appropriate to its name and purpose.
MAIN STREET
Opposite the beginning of Bedford Street, Main Street leaves the Square. Its first section, with stores on both sides, is called the Milldam. Here, where once probably stood the Indian fishweir ('the Weire at Concord over against the town'), the settlers built for their mill a dam which long held back the millpond with its slight head of water. Into the pond, in 1775, the British rolled the barrels of flour which were after- ward salvaged [page 61]. Gradually pond and dam disappeared, though the latest mill still stands. Where Walden Street leaves Main Street to the left, the stores run with it a little way; they also proceed along Main Street for a short distance, opposite the banks. The first of these, opposite Walden Street, a plain and simple building with columns, was the scene of Concord's one and only bank robbery, in 1865. It is now used for business purposes.
(It is worth remarking that the modern savings- bank building, the Trinitarian Church, the Public Library, and the Antiquarian Society's building are all the work of Harry B. Little, architect, a citizen of the town.)
Beyond the savings bank is the Main Street Bury- ing Ground, with many stones as quaint and interest- ing as those on the hill.
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The Library. In the fork of the road (where Sudbury Road goes to the left) stands the Free Public Library, which contains some seventy thousand volumes in a handsome building, conveniently equipped. (A branch at West Concord has another ten thousand books.) The Concord Alcove holds only books writ- ten in Concord or by Concord people. In the Library are manuscripts by Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Mrs. Lothrop. There is displayed an excellent collection of local Indian relics. The rooms for the public are large and attractive. The central octagon room holds French's fine statue of Emerson; it shows him in the favorite dressing-gown in which he used to write. In addition there are busts of Thoreau (by Ricketson), Bronson and Louisa Alcott, Haw- thorne, and local celebrities such as Samuel Hoar [page 23]. In the reference room is the table used in the White House by Presidents from Madison to Grant.
The Academy and the Cheney Elms. Leaving the Library and proceeding along Main Street one passes various former dwellings of the Thoreau family [page 2]. Opposite Academy Lane is the Concord Academy for girls, housed in old Concord residences. On the same side, across from the next street (Belknap Street), are the two 'Cheney elms' (one now but a stump), concerning which Daniel Webster, a friend of the Cheney family, is said to have perpetrated the following syllogism. 'These are the two finest trees in Concord - and Concord is the finest town in Massachusetts - and Massachusetts is the finest state in the Union - and the United States is the finest country in the world. Therefore these trees are the two finest in the world.'
Thoreau-Alcott House. On the other side of the
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street, the third building from Belknap Street, is the Thoreau-Alcott house. (The house is not open to the public.) Here the Thoreau family lived for a num- ber of years, and in the room to the right of the front door Thoreau died. To the left of the house, and stretching from the rear, once stood the family pencil factory. This is the latest of the Thoreau houses, several of which probably had a little factory close by.
When the Alcotts, on the wave of Louisa's prosper- ity, bought the house, Alcott added (on the right) the wing to hold his library, prominent in which were the many volumes of his journals. These are now in the Public Library, but still privately owned and con- trolled. An Alcott descendant occupies the house.
If the visitor follows Main Street still farther to the fork, and takes the right branch (Elm Street), he will see, just as he reaches the bridge, on the right, the brick-end house built by Frank B. Sanborn, friend of the famous writers. In this house he gave shelter to the poet Channing. Sanborn is best known in Concord for the incident in 1859, when he lived on Sudbury Road. United States marshals attempted to arrest him for his connection with John Brown; he resisted; the town turned out to help him; Judge Hoar hastily produced a writ of habeas corpus; and the marshals were forced to depart, to molest him no more.
From this point, taking River Street, opposite the Sanborn house, the visitor comes to Main Street again, and turning right, crosses the South Bridge, once oc- cupied by the British [page 63]. Following Main Street as it swings left under the railroad bridge, he first finds on his right the home of Joseph Hosmer [pages 60, 65] and close beyond it the Hosmer 'Cottage' of the Alcotts, now somewhat changed. This house is said
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to be described as the 'Dovecote' in which 'Meg' of 'Little Women' began her married life.
Returning and, after passing Elm Street again, turn- ing to the right on the second street (Thoreau Street), the visitor is, from this point, on the most direct route to Walden Pond, for the street, running almost straight, joins Walden Street [below].
But if he turns from Thoreau Street at the first right hand, onto Belknap Street, and crosses the rail- road, he will find, farther on the right (the first house placed well back), one remaining Thoreau house. H. S. Canby says that Thoreau designed it (let us rather say planned, for it is ugly enough), and dug and stoned the cellar. A pencil shed is still attached to it. But the house has suffered from fire, and is shabby and empty. As this section of Concord is called 'Texas' (for reasons difficult to reconcile), this is the Thoreau Texas house.
WALDEN STREET AND WALDEN POND
The visitor should return along Main Street to the Milldam, and on reaching Walden Street, already noted as on the right, he should turn into it. At the corner of the next street (Hubbard Street) is the modern Post Office, which houses a mural of the Fight, by Charles Kaeselau. Opposite is the at- tractive Concord Book Shop. Across Hubbard Street is the Trinitarian Church (Congregational) with its parsonage beyond.
Walden Street presently swings to the right through open country, is joined from the right by Thoreau Street and climbs Brister's Hill, named for the negro
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Brister Freeman. In 'Walden' Thoreau mentions Brister, and his spring (now buried), and his wife. To the left, running up the hill, is the town forest, containing Fairyland Pond. At the top of the hill the visitor crosses the modern Route 2, and at the very corner, on the right, to find Thoreau's cairn he must leave the road and enter, on foot, Walden Pond State Reservation.
Thoreau's Cairn. Here are two woods roads, one on each side of the group of road signs. Entering by either and, when they meet and join, following them a hundred yards farther, keeping mostly on the same level, the visitor does not leave this road until at a slight clearing he takes another one which turns off diagonally to the left. (At this point there are now a few fallen logs.) This road, turning downhill, quickly becomes a steep gully-path, to the right of which one presently sees in the bushes four low stone posts which mark the site of Thoreau's hut [page 87]. Between them is a slight depression, his 'cellar.' A little farther downhill is the cairn of stones brought by the many visitors to the spot. A boulder at its foot has an in- scription to Thoreau.
In the hut Thoreau spent more than two years. In 'Walden' he compresses the time into one year, telling of incidents and observations in a style vigor- ous and arresting, with touches of his social gospel and occasional flights of fancy during the rounds of the seasons. Though the bare story includes little more than his building, his cultivating beans (near the crossroads just passed by the visitor), his doings on the lake, and his remarks on the town and his woods neighbors, this book is today probably more in- teresting and more read than any single volume writ- ten in Concord except 'Little Women.' This spot by
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the cove, though mostly ignored by the pleasure seekers who in summer throng the broad beach across the pond, is the object of pilgrimage of many Thoreau-lovers.
Returning, the visitor comes to the Milldam and the Square.
LEXINGTON ROAD
Lexington Road leads out of the Square past the Wright Tavern [page 6], next to which stands the First Parish Meetinghouse (Unitarian). Although the tablet in front of this speaks of the First Provincial Congress as meeting here, it refers to the building burned in 1900. In that structure, which was standing in 1775, the Congress indeed met, with John Hancock and Samuel Adams as leaders, and with William Emerson [page 7] as chaplain. In the vestry Thoreau made his dramatic and stirring 'Plea for Captain John Brown,' which changed the hearts and opinions of many of his townsmen. The present structure was built in 1901, much like its predecessor, but of some- what different proportions.
Opposite is a row of houses, some of which are in- teresting for their age and style, being pre-Revolu- tionary. In one is the Art Center, which holds a per- manent collection, and in summer free exhibitions. In the brick-end house of later date lived Thomas Whitney Surette, a modern leader in music education. Still farther along, the red house next to the corner is the house of Reuben Brown, harness maker and Revo- lutionary patriot, whose brief entrance into and exit from history was on the day of the Fight [page 59]. The house was set on fire, but extinguished, on that day. The building, little changed from its original
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The Unitarian Church
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structure, is of the farmhouse type, built around a great central chimney, with a small entrance hall and a winding stair. It is now a tearoom and restau- rant.
The house at the bend of the road, the Heywood house, is likewise Revolutionary. Its picket fence, now gone, went back to Emerson's day, and the late owner used to relate the following. Emerson's wife would not allow her husband to smoke either in the house or in the village. He used, therefore, to light his cigar at his door on going to the village, but would conceal it behind one of the pickets of this fence. Whenever he perceived this, young Heywood would slip up to the fence, and if the cigar were still alight, would en- joy a few puffs himself. More he did not risk, for Emerson, returning, would retrieve the cigar, light it, and finish it on the way home.
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