Concord History

In Concord’s center, there stands an iconic red building. Known as the Wright Tavern, the building is 275 years old and has been closed to the public for more than 30 years (except for a brief time when operated by Concord Museum). That is about to change. 

Special Collections recently acquired family papers and business records related to the Damon family and the Damon Mill, a textile manufacturer which in the 19th century, operated on Main Street in West Concord, then known as Factory Village. Descendants of the textile mill owner Calvin Carver Damon donated a wealth of archival materials that enrich our understanding of the Damon family and their operation of the mill. 

The world’s most famous grape began its life in a backyard in Concord. In the 1840s, Ephraim Wales Bull retired to the countryside to become a horticulturist after a career as a gold beater in Boston. At his farm, Bull set out to cultivate a variety of grape that would better withstand early frosts and severe winters. He did 22,000 crossbreeding experiments on 125 vines and in 1849 discovered a wild grape he thought looked promising – it was sweet, palatable, and hardy – and began to propagate it. He named this grape the Concord.

Surviving a New England winter in the 1700s was no easy task. Food, shelter, firewood, and warm clothing were essential. One of the most important jobs of summer and fall was to preserve enough food to feed a family throughout the long winter months.

It’s that time of year again when we start to think about holiday gift giving. And what’s better than giving or getting a book as a present? So let’s talk about books! Since this is a magazine dedicated to Concord, let’s focus on books about that most important day of days in Concord history, April 19, 1775. 

“I don’t know if this one will make it,” says Billy Crosby, evaluating the badly deteriorated old Tourist Info sign that hung for decades outside the old Visitor Center. “They painted directly onto untreated plywood, so it’s flaking. The seal sticker is peeling. And look at how they tried to fix the lettering!” He shakes his head. Anything that does not make it to the display hallways still has no fear of the dumpster. Billy’s not about to toss any of it. “Someday I might do a hall of ‘Frauds’,” referring to signs so badly deteriorated that he has to stabilize them so they can hang in the museum.

Museums do not often get to reinvent themselves, but the Concord Museum seized this once-in-a-generation opportunity after renovating their main building and constructing a new Education Center in 2018. Years in the making, the curatorial team took advantage of over a dozen empty galleries and a world-class collection and embarked on a major project that would transform the Concord Museum and visitor experience. This August, that exciting and challenging process concluded with the opening of ten new permanent galleries. 

It was April 1900, and the First Parish in Concord was putting the finishing touches on a splendid renovation of its historic meetinghouse on Lexington Road. No expense had been spared, for in a few days the parish would celebrate Easter Sunday, and less than a week later, the town would gather in its pews to honor the 125th anniversary of the minutemen’s victory at the North Bridge.

If, on a summer day, you drive down Sudbury Road toward Nine Acre Corner, then, having left the shade of the woods and passed by a line of sunlit fields, you will see a squat brown building standing amidst the rows of crops. This is the farm stand of Verrill Farm. This local family business has gone through many shapes and sizes over the course of its 100-year history, surviving economic changes and even a devastating fire, but it has always carried on in its mission to “nourish the body and soul of our customers by providing healthful food of superb flavor in surroundings of beauty.”

In her pioneering book Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), writer and thinker Margaret Fuller articulated the goal of women’s progress in America: “We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man.” Spoken seventy-five years before women had the legal right to vote, Fuller’s words served as a rallying cry for generations of people who fought to live and work as they pleased.