Concord, Massachusetts, is noted for its historic and literary attractions. The town is northwest of Boston. Its largest industries make electronic test equipment and do metallurgical research. The Concord grape originated in Concord. Welch Foods Incorporated, a maker of fruit products, has its headquarters there.
A group of English Protestants called Puritans founded Concord in 1635. Concord became a center of revolutionary activity. It was a storage area for military supplies. Volunteers from the surrounding countryside called minutemen rallied to oppose British forces searching for these supplies. The patriots exchanged shots with British troops in a brief battle at Concord’s North Bridge on April 19, 1775. The fight was one of the opening battles of the American Revolution. Today, a replica of the bridge and a statue called The Minute Man by Daniel Chester French mark the battleground. The site is part of Minute Man National Historical Park.
Concord was a center of American writing in the 1800′s. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau lived there. People may visit the Emerson House; Orchard House, where Alcott wrote most of Little Women; and the Old Manse of Hawthorne. The Concord Museum displays period rooms of the 1600′s to the 1800′s. Nearby is Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Concord is governed by an open town meeting, a board of selectmen, and a town manager.