out, the inhabitants lived "chiefly in one straite | education took the second place. Originally Mr. streame under a sunny banke in a low levell": Bulkley was teacher and Mr. Jones pastor. But that is where the first winter. found them. But after the removal of the latter, Mr. Bulkley took that year new and better lands were divided. As the whole charge. His son and successor, Edward before, the ground near the centre was apportioned Bulkley, did the same until 1667, when the into individuals, while the outlands were held in creasing numbers and his decreasing strength led common. From this time there was a steady im- to the appointment of Rev. Joseph Estabrook as provement. Acton, and probably a part of Little- colleague. "The covenant with the Rev. Pastor ton, under the title of Concord Village, were added and teacher was for eighty pounds apiece annually." to the original grant, and the Blood Farms, a tract So stood the old town at the close of its forty of two or three thousand acres now in Carlisle, were years, yet wrestling with the difficulties of frontier in 1685 definitely annexed. This was the time of life, but slowly gathering all the elements of mategreatest territorial enlargement. All of the pres- rial and spiritual prosperity. ent Concord and Acton, and a considerable portion of Bedford, Carlisle, Littleton, and Lincoln, were included in the town bounds. KING PHILIP'S WAR. In 1654 Major Willard led a little force, partly from Concord, against Ninigret, a petty chieftain living where Rhode Island and Connecticut touch on the shores of the Atlantic. But the cunning savage hid himself in impenetrable swamps, and the expedition returned. Disastrous war replaced If now we could see Concord as it was at the THE first forty years were simply years of strugclose of its first forty years' life, we should find gle with the wilderness. The terrible Pequot War but one public building, the meeting-house, the broke out, indeed, within eighteen months of the true centre of a Puritan town, its place of public settlement. But it was far off. It soon closed; business and of public worship. It was built in and it brought the land rest for forty years. 1673, to replace that which stood for forty years "on the hill neare the brook on the easte of Goodman Judgson's lott." Its site was on the church green a little west of the modern building. It was a square house, with a luthern window on each side of the roof, and a cupola on the centre of it,in short, a duplicate of the old Hingham meeting-peace when Philip of Pokanoket, in the month of house, built seven years later. Around it was June, 1675, assaulted Swanzey. Driven from its clustered a little village of perhaps four hundred original seat, the war entered upon its second stage people. Four roads connected this village with by the rising of the Nipmucks, a tribe occupying the outer world: the old road to Boston through Central Massachusetts. Captain Edward HutchinWatertown; that from Merriam's Corner to Bed- son of Boston and Thomas Wheeler of Concord ford and Billerica; the way across the Great South were despatched to Brookfield, July 28, with Bridge and Derby's Bridge, which for one hundred twenty troopers, mainly from Concord and its and forty years alone gave access to the southern vicinity, to secure the neutrality of this tribe. part of the town and the western settlements; and, Through the credulity of their Brookfield friends finally, the road over the Old North Bridge, which they fell into an ambush, and Captain Hutchinson for an equal period was the single line of commu- was mortally wounded, and Captain Wheeler and nication with the northern districts and the upper son severely so, and Samuel Smedley, Jr., of Contowns. There was a little iron-foundry in the cord and seven others killed; to which must be southwest corner of the town, smelting bog-ore, added Henry Young of Concord, shot during the and probably a grist and saw mill. This was the siege which followed. The survivors, guided by whole manufacturing interest. The law required friendly Indians, reached a fortified house, where, a common school for fifty families, and a grammar under the conduct of Lieutenant Simon Davis of school if there were a hundred. But the official Concord, they withstood a desperate assault, and at report of John Smedley, Sr., and Thomas Dakin, the last extremity were rescued by their old neighin which they say that "as for schools we have in bor, Major Simon Willard, with forty-six Middleevery quarter of our town men and women that sex troopers. By October the outer girdle of teach to read and write English, when parents can towns west of Concord had been abandoned. spare their children and others to go to them," Two months later the Narragansetts rose from a indicates that in the hard struggle for subsistence | treacherous truce. Then occurred that terrible struggle in the depth of a New England winter, The vexed question of jurisdiction over the Blood known as the Narragansett Swamp Fight. Ten Farms, in 1685, was peaceably settled. The next Concord men were in that fight. "George Hey-year Hon. Peter Bulkley and Captain Thomas ward was slayne," and Abraham Temple and Henchman bought half of Nashobah of its native Thomas Brown-probably the town-clerk owners. Concord, like other towns, found her wounded. By March, 1676, the inner girdle of rights threatened by the tyrannical measures of towns-Dunstable, Groton, Lancaster, etc. Governor Andros, and, like them, did her part in the revolution which followed, by sending a company to Boston under Lieutenant John Heald. had also been largely abandoned. Concord had not escaped without loss. Ten men going to the help of Sudbury were waylaid and killed. At least four others were slain on their farms or while going to them. Captain Timothy Wheeler had already been authorized to impress a gunsmith; and the General Court now declared Concord to be a frontier town, which must daily send out a scouting party, and keep men ready to go to the help of other towns. One painful episode of the war was the treatment of the Nashobah Indians, who, by order of the court, had removed to Concord. A poor remnant of fifty-eight men, women, and children, they were living soberly, quietly, and industriously with John Hoar, who alone would take charge of them, when Captain Samuel Moseley broke into their home, scattered their property, and seizing them hurried them to what Gookin calls" their furnace of affliction" at Deer Island. This Captain Moseley was an old West Indian buccaneer, and an officer of desperate courage. He commanded one hundred and three volunteers, of whom twelve were pirates pardoned to fight Indians. Fit instruments for an unjust deed! The war closed with the death of Philip in August. Concord would hardly be called one of the great sufferers; yet in fourteen months it lost one sixth of its men, and so much property that fifty pounds of its taxes were remitted, and eighteen of its hundred families received help from "the Irish Charity," a fund collected in Ireland to help those in New England who had suffered from Indians. Still, the town was not so poor as to forget higher duties, as in its lowest estate, in 1658, it gave five pounds for five years to Harvard College; so, in 1678, out of its poverty it subscribed forty-five pounds to help build the second Harvard Hall. FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS. 1689 - 1763. FROM the close of King Philip's War to the accession of King William few events of interest are recorded. During that war, or shortly after it, and perhaps as a result of it, many families of means and influence made Concord their home. Of the seventy-four years from 1689 to 1763, forty-four were given to six wars, in which the barbarities of savage warfare were strangely mingled with the scarcely less atrocious measures of their civilized brothers. King William's War broke out in 1689. How great the fears were is evident from the order of 1690, that Captain Simon Davis of Concord shall impress a company of forty troopers and thirty foot soldiers to defend the frontier from Dunstable to Marlborough; that forty men shall be in each frontier town for a main guard; and that two hundred and fifty to four hundred shall always be ready, "for a flying army," to pursue the enemy. The attacks made upon Billerica, Dunstable, Andover, and Groton - in the last of which in one day, in 1694, twenty were. killed and fifteen led into captivity-prove that these fears were not groundless. And the petition of Thomas Brown that he may be reimbursed for a horse lost in 1697, while he was by order of Colonel Tyng pursuing Indians, shows that the flying army was not inactive. In 1703, after six brief years of rest, the dreadful Queen Anne's War began; as dreadful for Indian raids as King Philip's. Penhallow records the names of one hundred and sixty-six persons killed or captured in 1703 in the little settlements on the Maine coast. And in the single county of Hampshire over two hundred shared the same fate; while nearer home, Dunstable, Marlborough, and Groton again suffered. This condition of affairs demanded of the adjacent towns constant vigilance. Captain Bulkley of Concord commanded a company all through the war, passing as needed from place to place, and displaying such activity as to receive special mention from Penhallow. In the successful expedition of 1710 against Port Royal, Moses Wheat, William and Thomas Robbins were present, and how many more the imperfect records make it impossible to say. The Peace of Utrecht brought only nominal relief, for the Indians, alarmed by the steady advance of the whites, and stimulated, as the Eng West River, where Londonderry now stands, was overtaken by one hundred and fifty Indians. He was himself surrounded and had his belt cut by a flying hatchet, but finally succeeded with twelve men in reaching Fort Dummer. Of the six who fell, four were from Concord. He lived to command a company in Governor Shirley's expedition against the French forts and settlements in Maine, and died soon after his return. The French and Indian War was a war of distant expeditions and had few incidents of local interest. It is sufficient to say that in all these expeditions—to Acadia in 1755, to Fort Edward and Crown Point in 1756, and at the final capture of Ticonderoga — the town was largely represented. lish believed, by the French missionary Rale, began them. He retreated; but on the banks of the afresh to make bloody incursions. The remarkable events of the war were the taking of Norridgewock, the death of Rale, and Lovewell's Fight. A halo of romance has gathered around this fight; but, at the core of it, it was simply the unfortunate close of an expedition undertaken from the not very romantic motive of receiving £100 for each Indian scalp taken. Concord furnished nine of the fortysix men who marched out of Dunstable, and Lieutenants Robbins and Farwell were descendants of her first settlers. Lovewell's expedition has been kept in memory because of its tragic fate. But in reality it was one of many. On the Massachusett's rolls are found at least seven such companies, and in all of them Concord names. Nor did Lovewell's fate discourage brave men. Only four months after his death eighteen persons, some of whom had been in the disastrous fight, asked leave to form a company, and suggested that David Melvin was a suitable person to command. The one event of the Spanish War of interest to New England was "the expedition in 1741 against his Catholic Majesty in the West Indies." To this expedition Concord furnished Colonel Jonathan Prescott and eighteen others. The affair was miserably mismanaged; disease set in, and but three of the eighteen reached home. The War of the Austrian Succession opened in 1744. Its crowning glory was the capture of the stronghold of Louisburg by an army of farmers and fishermen. To that army Concord sent Captain David and Lieutenant Eleazer Melvin, both survivors of Lovewell's Fight, and a dozen more. The captain was wounded, and, after twenty years of hardship and peril, came home to die. His brother Eleazer kept bright the family record. Returning from the successful siege, he went back to his old business of Indian scouting, and led a company in 1746 to join the expedition against Canada, and made what was called "the long march" into the very borders of the enemies' country. The next year he was stationed with fifty men at Northfield, to protect the frontier. In 1748 he recruited a new company of rangers, mainly from his native town, and through the spring of that year he was at Fort Dummer, near Brattleborough. With eighteen inen he started from that post on a scout through the woods, to Crown Point. When he reached Lake Champlain two canoes came in sight, and though he was but a mile distant from the enemy's fort, he imprudently permitted his men to fire upon - The peace of 1763 brought permanent relief from the French and Indians. The households could sleep in safety. The great drafts, which seemed to include all the able-bodied, were at an end. It is wonderful to note how, in the face of almost perpetual warfare, the town had grown. In 1652 there were but fifty families. In 1680, directly after King Philip's War, there were one hundred. That hundred had more than doubled in 1706; and in 1764, in the domain once Concord, there were 2,700 people. The mere statement speaks volumes for the courage and vigor of those who subdued the wilderness. The historian calls the period we have traversed the dark time of education. Probably with truth. The Concord records indicate that the schools were of no very high order, that they were scantily supported, and that, as the report of 1680 says, they were attended" when the parents could spare their children." The gift of Captain Ephraim Flint of £100 to Harvard College, and Captain Timothy Wheeler's bequest of three acres of land and the house standing on the same for the furtherance of learning, shows that there were those who looked beyond the burden of the present hour to the higher needs of a community. The ecclesiastical history of the period was stormy. Rev. Edward Bulkley died January 2, 1696, at a great age, after a fifty-three years' ministry. His colleague, Rev. Joseph Estabrook, followed him September 16, 1711. Rev. John Whiting became pastor May 14, 1712, but was dismissed in 1758, "causes of difference having arisen." Rev. Daniel Bliss, a preacher of great earnestness and power, succeeded him the next year. But the change did not bring peace. It was the time of "the great awakening." Whitefield came to America in 1740. He denounced Harvard College as destitute of true godliness, and spoke with no little severity of the ministers and the churches. Mr. Bliss espoused Mr. Whitefield's cause with all the fire of his ardent nature, invited him to preach, and in all ways helped him. The parish was divided; and after councils for and councils against him, in 1745 forty-seven persons were exempted from parish charges, and permitted to maintain public worship. This they did for fourteen years in the hall of a tavern, which, having the sign of a black horse, gave the gathering the title of " Black Horse Church." As Rev. Mr. Whiting was a regular attendant, we may suspect that the old difference was woven in with the new. Mr. Bliss died in 1764, and Rev. William Emerson took the vacant pulpit January 1, 1766. The embers still glowed. Upon the refusal of the new minister to receive a prominent citizen into the church they flamed again, but faded out before the intenser excitements of the opening Revolution. The meeting-house, now standing on the church green, was built in 1712, though then it was entirely destitute of porch, pillars, or spire. As the first fifty years was a period of territorial expansion, so the next hundred was one of more than equal territorial contraction. In 1715 what Concord owned in Nashobah helped to make Littleton. In 1729 Bedford took a large piece from the parent town. Concord Village, in 1735, became Acton. While in 1754 Lincoln, out of Concord, Weston, and Lexington, carved a township; Carlisle which separated in 1754 was re-annexed in 1757, and permanently set off in 1780. So before the close of the Revolutionary War the town assumed the shape which it has retained to our day. THE PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION. 1763-1783. THE long succession of wars had ended in the expulsion of France from the region east of the Mississippi. Two results followed. On the one hand England, oppressed by the debts which those wars had created, magnified her prerogatives, that she might wring money from her unwilling subjects. On the other hand, the colonists, relieved from their fear of the savage, and by that very relief growing to power with unprecedented rapidity, were less disposed to hear usurpations, and more disposed to appreciate their own constitutional rights. In the coming struggle, both from its position and the temper of its people, Concord was sure to take an early and not unimportant part. It was the first inland settlement in the state, one of the largest, and the true geographical centre of Middlesex County. As a shire-town it had felt that great quickening of thought and life which was inevitable when many times a year judges and juries, counsel and clients, came thither to try important questions, making the place. their home for days and weeks. It boasted the oldest military organization in the state, if we except the Ancient and Honorable Artillery, and had been in the wars a place of military gathering. As a result, Concord was then the heart of Middlesex, as no town ever can be again. Did the people desire to change the bounds of the county, they called a convention at Concord. Would they protest against the unlawful acts of the king, they sent delegates to the same spot. The temper of its people was eminently patriotic. They instructed their representative to protest against the Stamp Act. They resolved not to use foreign commodities, and declared that tea should not be brought within their limits. In 1772, in answer to the Boston Address, they said that they would not submit to any infringement of their liberties. The meeting of the court under the new and, as they held, unconstitutional method was prevented by a display of force. Some of their most prominent citizens were compelled publicly to express their sorrow for their unpatriotic language. In September, 1774, the town voted to buy powder and ball, and to name a Committee of Correspondence. That was a most striking occasion, when, on August 30 and 31, 1774, Middlesex, in convention assembled at Concord, first of all the counties, recommended that a provincial congress should meet at Concord the second Tuesday in October. What followed is matter of history. Ninety members of the General Court went to Salem October 5, and waited for General Gage; waited two days in vain; then resolved themselves into a provincial congress, to be joined by such others as the towns might appoint, and adjourned to meet on the 11th at Concord court-house. On that day three hundred came, chose John Hancock president, and Benjamin Lincoln secretary, and, to secure more room, adjourned to the meetinghouse. This body was in Concord in the months of March and April, 1775, and left only four days before the encounter at North Bridge. Important business was there transacted. A vote, advising town collectors not to pay taxes to Harrison Gray, seized the purse. The passage of "Rules and Regulations for the Massachusetts Army" drew the sword. The proclamation for a fast, every word of which was an appeal to God against oppression, enlisted on the side of freedom the religious sentiment. In that old meeting-house, still standing, what words to fire men's souls were spoken; what policy to shape the destiny of the state enacted! Scarcely Independence Hall itself has more venerable associations. The Committees of Safety and Supplies, to whom were intrusted the preparations for defence, were frequently at Concord. They were there, John Hancock at their head, on the 17th of April, not thirty-six hours before brave men were massacred, almost before his eyes, on Lexington Green. Very early they ordered that there be deposited at Worcester two hundred barrels of pork, four hundred of flour, and one hundred and fifteen bushels of pease; and at Concord, one hundred and thirtyfive barrels of pork, three hundred of flour, one hundred and fifty bushels of pease, and forty-five and told it. British officers, disguised, came to mark and report the places of deposit. So it happened that there was no other spot where General Gage could strike to any purpose. For success at Concord meant a disabling blow; and when Revere knew that a military expedition had started, he did not have to ask to what point. There was but one point. tierces of rice. Later it was voted that all the | a secret could not be kept. Tories stole to Boston cannon, mortars, cannon-balls, and shells be deposited in Worcester and Concord "in the same proportion that the provisions are deposited." These votes, as respects Worcester, seem never to have been carried into effect. But Concord became a great storehouse. The old jail, the farmers' barns, the town-house, the court-house, the tavernshed, the miller's loft, were extempore depots for provisions and munitions of war. No doubt Concord was chosen because it was near, but not too near, the scene of action, and because it had four military companies. The trustworthy character of Colonel Barrett, the custodian of these treasures, must have had its weight. The committee knew the importance of the charge. Colonel Barrett was told to keep watch night and day, always to have teams ready, "not so much as to mention powder, lest our enemies take advantage of it." But such "Last night, between ten and eleven o'clock," writes Lieutenant John Barker in his diary,1 "all of the Grenadiers and Light Infantry, under Colonel Sinith and Major Pitcairn, embarked and were landed upon the opposite shore on Cambridge Marsh. Few but the commanding officers knew what expedition we were going upon." They had a hard time, wading through the marsh, "wet to their 1 Manuscript of a British officer found in Philadelphia in 1876, and now deposited with the Massachusetts Historical Society. |