S TR R AW E BER IV RY R N H D IL R L O C R N GREAT MEADOWS D O . C BA 26 R 23 P P D. H E N L R R ES HIL T T PA E S ER’S E PET C NORTH 5 R M 2 BRIDGE 22 O S O P T N R T I approx. 1/4 mile 30 . LIBERTY ST. U N R D M D L R G D. MIL LO E R S N ETT W 27 R T BAR E L 28 L S T 29 R D . 32 4 TO 341 VIRGINIA ROAD BEDFORD ST. 4 INCORPORATED 1635 INCORPORATED 2 1 31 2 . 3 5 RT. 2 16 MAIN ST 6 7 10 19 11 12 MAIN ST. ELM ST. 10 RD. 14 LE TON 18 15 XI XING NG LE H . T 17 ON RD. A T W 20 S . D T T H IN S 13 O A STOW ST. O 40 TO M O 8 W R DAMON Y N E MILL E H 9 SUDBURY RD. CAMBRIDGE TPK. L CONCORD TPK. N 21 . HUBBARD ST. RD O THOREAU ST. R WALDEN ST. O O O B S BRO K ’ L L N R D A A EVERETT ST. G M U R D O D IE RT. 2 L NN A JE D LAUREL ST. O T O TOWN FOREST N W I N 41 IL FAIRYLAND LIA E POND M A S C RO G A R D IN E R P S C 39 S ’ O R E R T N IS R NUT MEADOW E B R 33 CROSSING SUDBURY RD. FAIRHAVEN RD. JENNIE DUGAN BRISTERS HILL RD. 34 RD. CONCORD TPK. HORE T AU’S PATH RT. 2 POWDERMIL L RD. 3 6 R T 35 . 1 37 2 WHITE 6 POND WALDEN POND 38 TO CODMAN ESTATE • LINCOLN, MA CONCORD VILLAGE CONCORD # UNDERGROUND RAILROAD STOPS N0 1 TOWN CENTER N0 2 LEXINGTON ROAD hosted a huge reception for John Brown and the “regular 1 Concord Town House - 22 Monument Square (1851) 8 Emerson House - 28 Cambridge Turnpike antislavery set”, and gave two of John Brown’s Concord Town records documented slavery as early as 1725. For Ralph Waldo Emerson was persuaded to speak out against daughters a home after he was hanged for his raid on many years in the 1850s and 1860s, Robbins House (#24) resident, slavery publicly by his wife Lydian, his Aunt Mary and Harper’s Ferry. Anna and Louisa Alcott (1832-1888) staged John Garrison (owner of #29) was the building Superintendent. his friend Mary Brooks. He supported the controversial plays to raise money for the Concord Antislavery Society. 2 abolitionist John Brown. Old Jail Site - Monument Square 12 455 Lexington Rd. (ca. 1714) In 1846, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1861) spent a night 9 Wayside - Concord Museum - 200 Lexington Rd. Home to Samuel Whitney (1734-1808), muster master of in jail for his refusal to pay his poll tax as a protest against Through original artifacts associated with Thoreau, Emerson the Concord Minutemen in 1775, and his enslaved man the war with Mexico and the spread of slavery. This event and antislavery activists, the museum galleries examine the Case(y) (c.1732-1822). In the woods to the left of the inspired his 1849 essay now known as Civil Disobedience. concept of liberty and the ability of individuals to effect change. Wayside, a plaque states, “In 1775, Casey was Samuel 3 Whitney’s enslaved person. When the Revolutionary War Mary Rice House - 44 Bedford St. (ca. 1840) 10 Benjamin Barron House - 245/249 Lexington Rd. Mary Rice (1790 - c.1866) assisted in the escape of fugitive Here the enslaved man John Jack (c.1706-1771) purchased his came, he ran away to war, fighting for the colonies, slaves. She helped replace John Jack’s gravestone and regu- freedom with money he earned as a shoemaker and laborer. and returned to Concord a free man.” When the Alcotts larly put flowers beside it. In 1864, she gathered signatures of His epitaph in the Hill Burying Ground is world famous (see #5). lived here from 1845-48, according to the plaque to 195 school children on a petition to President Lincoln, asking the right of the house, “The Wayside sheltered two him to “free slave children.” Copies of this petition and Lincoln’s 11 Alcott “Orchard” House - 399 Lexington Rd. self-emancipated slaves during the winter of 1846-47 response now hang in Concord’s three public elementary schools. The Alcotts were dedicated antislavery activists. It’s possi- as they fled north to freedom in Canada. A young 4 ble that they hid fugitive slaves at the Orchard house, where Louisa May Alcott learned first hand lessons about Sleepy Hollow Cemetery - Court Lane & Bedford St. (1823 and later) they lived from 1858-77. They held antislavery meetings here, slavery here that would influence her life and writing.” Peter Hutchinson (c.1799-1882) and his family were the last residents of color to live in The Robbins House (see #25). He and other family members were buried at Town expense; a gravestone was placed on Hutchinson’s unmarked family N0 3 ANTISLAVERY NEIGHBORHOOD plot in 2013. The grave of Thomas Dugan’s daughter Elsea 13 17 Dugan (#39) does have a stone, which reads, simply, “Faithful.” Trinitarian Congregational Church - 54 Walden St. Franklin Sanborn House & Schoolroom - 49 Sudbury Rd. (1850) Organized in 1825-26, this congregation took an early lead in Franklin Sanborn (1831-1917) was one of the “Secret Six” who 5 John Jack’s Grave - Hill Burying Ground, Monument Square (1635) antislavery activism. In 1836 the congregation voted to deny raised funds for John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. Sanborn Born in Africa, John Jack (c.1706-1771) was enslaved in Concord admission to slaveholders. Minister John Wilder (1796-1844) ran a small private school, and after Brown was hanged for well into middle age. After his owner Benjamin Barron died in hosted antislavery speakers in his pulpit, and his wife, Mary Wild- the Harper’s Ferry raid, two of Brown’s daughters came to 1754, Jack worked various jobs to earn the money to purchase er (1802-1893), was the first president of the Concord Female Concord and attended Sanborn’s school. Federal marshals his freedom and then to acquire 8 acres of land in the Great Antislavery Society in 1837. A successor in the pulpit, the tried unsuccessfully to arrest Sanborn for aiding Brown. Field and Great Meadow – the first formerly enslaved man to Rev. Daniel Foster took a prominent part in opposition to 18 become a landowner in Concord. Jack also joined the Concord the Fugitive Slave Law and later moved to Kansas Col. William Whiting House - 169 Main St. (ca. 1800-10) Col. Whiting (1813-1873) was vice president of the state Anti- church. At his death Jack bequeathed his property to Violet to join John Brown’s fight for a free state. slavery Society, and sheltered runaway enslaved people. Barnes, with whom he had been enslaved; it’s not clear whether 14 Abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison (who published the she was allowed to keep it. Daniel Bliss, Esq., a Loyalist lawyer, Brooks House - 45 Hubbard St. (ca. 1740) Mary Merrick Brooks (1801-1868), granddaughter and daugh- antislavery newspaper The Liberator), Wendell Phillips and composed an epitaph for John Jack that implicitly castigated ter of merchants who had once bought and sold enslaved John Brown were all guests in this house. the hypocrisy of Patriots in demanding liberty for themselves people, was one of Concord’s leading white abolitionists. She while holding slaves. When Daniel Bliss fled for British lines, the 19 carried antislavery petitions from door to door for neigh- Samuel Hoar House - 158 Main St. (ca. 1810/1819) court approved a claim of £3.18.06 on Bliss’s estate to Violet. One of Concord’s leading politicians, the lawyer Samuel Hoar bors to sign. She organized “ladies’ fairs” to raise money for (1778-1856) served one term in Congress as a Whig (1835-37) 6 20 Lexington Rd. the antislavery cause and contributed her signature First Parish Church - and helped to found the Free Soil Party to oppose the expan- A public building for religious worship and town meetings, “Brooks cake” to such events. the First Parish meetinghouse provided an occasional plat- sion of slavery into the western territories. In 1844 Hoar was 15 Francis and Ann Bigelow House - 19 Sudbury Rd. (ca. 1840-50) form for antislavery speakers in the quarter-century before dispatched by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to protest Shadrach Minkins (1814-1875), enslaved in Norfolk, Virginia, the arrest of African American sailors from the Bay State when the Civil War, as did the Trinitarian Church nearby. Among stowed away on a northern-bound vessel and made his way the well-known formerly enslaved people who gave the ships on which they served docked in the port of Charleston. to freedom in Boston in May 1850. Nine months later he was An angry mob prevented Hoar from carrying out his mission. antislavery speeches here were Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) seized by bounty hunters, the first refugee from the South to be and Harriet Tubman (1820-1913). The Middlesex County The incident strengthened support for the antislavery arrested in Boston under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. A crowd cause in Concord. Antislavery Society met from time to time at the church, organized by the Boston Vigilance Committee rescued Minkins which burned and was rebuilt in 1901.