The New International Encyclopædia/Concord (Massachusetts)

CONCORD, kŏṉ′kẽrd. A town in Middlesex County, Mass., 20 miles northwest of Boston; on the Concord River and on the Boston and Maine Railroad (Map: Massachusetts, E 3). It has manufactures of rubber goods and harness. The Massachusetts Reformatory is situated here. The government is administered by town meetings, held annually and at special call. Population, in 1890, 4427; in 1900, 5652. Concord, settled in 1635, is the oldest interior town in Massachusetts, and by the time of the Revolution had come to be “one of the great centres, not only of intellectual life, but also of political influence and power.” In August, 1774, the Middlesex Convention, the first county convention assembled in Massachusetts, was held here, every town being represented; and on October 11, under the stimulus of the Revolutionary agitation, the first Provincial Congress, presided over by John Hancock, met to consider the ways and means of resisting the tyrannies of the mother country. Later large quantities of ammunition and military supplies were stored here, and in an attempt made by the British to destroy them, on April 19, 1775, occurred the memorable fight which precipitated the War of the Revolution. (See Lexington.) In 1787, during Shays's Rebellion, a body of insurgents entered Concord and prevented the sitting of its courts. The town is chiefly notable for having been the home of a distinguished coterie of writers and thinkers, including Emerson, Thoreau, A. Bronson Alcott, Louisa M. Alcott, Hawthorne, and William Ellery Channing, ‘the poet.’ Consult: Hurd, History of Middlesex County (Philadelphia, 1890); Emerson, Historical Discourse Delivered in 1835 (Concord, 1835).