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About

Located 20 miles west of Boston, Concord is a picturesque New England community of handsome residences, preserved open spaces, family-owned farms and thriving commercial centers. The town is served by MBTA commuter rail to Boston, Cambridge and Fitchburg. State highway Route 2 runs through Concord, and Routes 128/95 and 495 are conveniently accessed.

Concord, signifying agreement and harmony, was incorporated as the first inland settlement in Massachusetts through a grant from the Massachusetts General Court dated September 12, 1635. Concord supported Native American activity long before the European settlers arrived. The area was inhabited by the various Nipmuc groups, and the village of Musketaquid, which means “reedy river,” was established as a principle center of the Massachusetts tribe.The native people called the area where the Assabet and Sudbury rivers meet “Nashawtuc,” which means “between the rivers.” This area of Concord is comprised of about 400 acres and is home to these significant people and milestones in American history:

The Opening Battles of the American Revolution

  • As the scene of the first battle of the American Revolutionary War (War for Independence) on April 19, 1775, it is considered the birthplace of the nation, where the “shot heard ‘round the world” for liberty and self government was fired.
  • Concord’s part of the onset of the American Revolution began on April 19th, 1775 with a battle between the Minutemen and the Redcoats that lasted less than five minutes at the Old North Bridge. The British retreated back to Boston, hotly pursued all the way by Minutemen from Concord and our neighboring towns.
  • Paul Revere, who made his famous midnight ride on April 19th, 1775 to warn the people that the British were on the march, never got here. He was captured after he left Lexington. Doctor Samuel Prescott, a Concord citizen, who he had just met on the road, took the message to Concord.

Concord, MA is Home to Many Sculptors, Authors, and Activists

  • Daniel Chester French, one of America’s most famous sculptors, designed the minuteman statue at the Old North Bridge when he was 23. One of his most famous works of art was the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial down in Washington DC.
  • Concord is also rich in literary history as home to many current authors as well as being the home of Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Sleepy Hollow Cemetery was opened in 1855. Concord’s most famous authors are buried there.
  • There are many houses in Concord that were stops on the Underground Railroad.The Alcotts, Thoreaus and Emersons were all antislavery activists. The sisters, aunts, mothers and wives of those famous Transcendentalists formed the “Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society”. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Lewis Hayden, William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown all visited and spoke in Concord.

Making an Economical and Environmental Impact in Concord Village

  • The development of West Concord started in 1655 at what is now Damon Mill Square, by the falls of the Assabet River on Route 62. One of the original proprietors of Concord Village, George Heywood, started a sawmill where Harrington Avenue now meets Main Street. Shortly after, bog iron ore was discovered here, and the Saugus Ironworks established the iron work farm on the north bank of the river. This was Concord’s first major industry.
  • Ephraim Bull developed the Concord grape by crossing a wild grape he found here with other varieties. It was very successful, but when he tried to market it, others sold it for their own profit. He died an impoverished man. On his gravestone it says, “He sowed, but others reaped.”
  • Concord has played a central role in the environmental movement and continues to do so to this day. Legislation banning the sale of single-serving plastic water bottles passed in Concord on April 26, 2012, making Concord the first village in the nation to ban single- serving plastic bottles. Concord also has one of the first Electric school buses in the Country.