Concord Art Association – 37 Lexington Road.
Has been recognized as an official stop on the Underground Railroad

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John Jack’s Grave – Old Burying Ground.
Born in Africa, John Jack was enslaved until his early forties, when his owner died. John Jack was known for his resourcefulness and worked various jobs saving enough money to buy 8.5 acres of land. He was the first former enslaved person to purchase land in Concord. Before his death in 1773, John Jack bequeathed land to his female partner, who was forced to turn the land over to her white master. A local Tory from a slaveholding family composed an epitaph for John Jack that castigated local Patriots for calling themselves Britain’s slaves even as they, themselves, were slaveholders.

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Mary Rice House – 44 Bedford Street.
Mary Rice was a station master on the Underground Railroad who helped erect and regularly put flowers on John Jack’s grave. Along with Mary Peabody Mann, Mary Rice gathered hundreds of school children’s signatures on a petition to President Lincoln, asking him to end slavery. Copies of this petition and Lincoln’s response will hang in Concord’s 3 elementary schools in Fall 2009.

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Town Hall – Monument Square.
The first Europeans transported enslaved persons with them when they incorporated Concord in 1635. Bills of sale of Africans were also accessible in town records. These records are currently housed in Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library.

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Old Jail Site.
Thoreau spent the night in jail for failure to pay a poll tax in protest against the war with Mexico and the potential spread of slavery. He later wrote the book Civil Disobedience.

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Josiah Bartlett’s House – 35 Lowell Road.
Dr. Josiah Bartlett delivered babies for six decades in the mid 19th century and was an active aboliionist.

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First Parish Church – 20 Lexington Road.
Commonly used for public discourse on slavery in the 1800’s. Many famous blacks, such as Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, gave speeches there. Many Middlesex County Antislavery Society meetings were held at the church.

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Tri-Con Church – 54 Walden Street.
Same purpose as the First Parish Church.

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Brooks House – 45 Hubbard Street.
Moved from the Concord Free Public Library site to 45 Hubbard Street in 1872, and was originally the Black Horse Tavern. A slave-owner’s daughter, Mary Merrick Brooks was undoubtedly Concord’s leading abolitionist.

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Bigelow/Shadrach Minkins House – 19 Sudbury Road
A station in the Underground Railroad: one of the escaped slaves they assisted was a man named Shadrach Minkins. Shadrach was the first runaway seized under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Shadrach’s lawyer was Robert Morris, Massachusetts’ second lawyer of African descent.

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COncord Free Public Library – 129 Main Street.
Repository of the original documents telling of Concord’s antislavery efforts and earliest African and African-American residents. Original site of Mary Merrick Brooks’ House (see #9.)

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Franklin Sanborn’s House – 49 Sudbury Road.
House and schoolroom (which he ran with Mary Mann, also an abolitionist) — Franklin Sanborn (one of the “Secret Six”) was an outspoken leader of the abolutionist movement and a friend and supporter of John Brown of the Harper’s Ferry Raid.

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Concord Depot – 80-86 Thoreau Street.
Transit location for many of the antislavery visitors.

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Thoreau House – 255 Main Street.
The entire Thoreau family was instrumental in the antislavery movement. It was here that Thoreau wrote about lodging self-emancipated slave Henry Williams and putting him on a train to Canada in his Journal, 10/1/1851.

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William Whiting House – 169 Main Street.
William Whiting’s home was at the center of a neighborhood of antislavery activity. This area included houses owned by Samuel Hoar and his son Ebenezer, as well as various Thoreau homes.

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Reuben Brown House – 77 Lexington Road.
Often when Ralph Waldo Emerson had so many visitors that his house wasn’t big enough, he put them up at the Reuben Brown House. In 1856, one such visitor was the fiery abolitionist John Brown. Two years later John Brown led the attack on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry.

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Benjamin Barron House – 245/249 Lexington Road.
Here the enslaved person John Jack purchased his freedom as a shoemaker. His epitaph in the Old Hill Burying ground is world-famous (see #2).

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Alcott ‘Orchard’ House – 399 Lexington Road.
The Alcotts were abolitionists and housed many self-emancipated slaves on their way to Canada

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Wayside – 455 Lexington Road.
According to the plaque here “The Wayside sheltered two self-emancipated slaves during the winter of 1846-1847 as they fled north to freedom in Canada. A young Louisa May Alcott learned first hand lessons about slavery here that would influence her life and writing. The Wayside, a unit of the Minuteman National Historic Parks, makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the Underground Railroad in American History, and qualifies for inclusion in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.” Mary Mann, who helped organize the Concord children’s petition to President Lincoln requesting the end of slavery, also lived at the wayside.

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Casey’s Plaque
A few yards down from the Wayside, Casey’s plaque is a reminder of one of Concord’s courageous self-emancipated slaves. Casey lived in a small house on what had been Samuel Whitney’s property. Casey spoke often of being stolen from his wife and children in Africa and insisted that he visited them every night. The plaque states: “In 1775, Casey was Samuel Whitney’s enslaved person. When the Revolutionary war came, he ran away to war, fighting for the colonies, and returned to Concord a free man.

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Concord Museum – 200 Lexington Road.
Through original artifacts associated with Thoreau, Emerson, and other antislavery activists, the Museum galleries examine the concept of liberty and the ability of individuals to affect change. The museum includes many artifacts such as a wood plane made by Cesar Chelor (1720-1784), the first identified African American toolmaker in North America.

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Emerson House – 28 Cambridge Turnpike.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an abolitionist who also assisted John Brown, leader of the Harper’s Ferry Raid in 1859.

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Barrett House – 448 Barrett’s Mill Road.
Colonel James Barrett was like many other wealthy and titled Concord men in the 1700s in that he owned humans, including a young man named Philip who is listed in a 1775 militia roll call. For a school assignment, one of James’s sons drew up a mock bill of sale in which he imagined selling Phillip to a Cambridge resident.

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Old Manse – 269 Monument Street.
This opulent mansion (manse, commonly referred to a Cleric’s house and land) was built by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s grandfather, the Reverend William Emerson, Concord’s patriot minister during the early stages of the Revolution. William owned at least one man, Frank, and shared several women with his mother-in-law, widow of the town’s previous minister. The Manse was later home to abolitionist ministers in the Ripley Family.

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Sleepy Hollow Cemetary.
Both Peter Hutchinson and Prudence Ward (abolitionist) are buried there.

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Garrison and Robbins Field – “The Edge of the Great Field.”
In the late 1770s, former enslaved person Caesar Robbins built or moved into a one-room house on the edge of the Great Field near or at the same location where John Jack had owned land. Caesar was not a landowner, however. He lived with the permission of a wealthy landowner Humphrey Barrett. Caesar’s son Peter would later raise a large family here and for a short period own the land. A second room was added to the house for Peter’s sister Susan and her husband, former enslaved person Jack Garrison, who also lived there with Humphrey’s permission. Susan Garrison either hosted or was visited on occasion by the Concord Female Charitable and/or Antislavery Society. The home was later purchased by former enslaved person Peter Hutchinson. It was moved to 324 Bedford Street after Peter’s death. In all, former enslaved persons and their descendents lived at the edge of the Great Field for over 100 years.

Caesar Robbins
Caesar Robbins was enslaved in Concord until the Revolution, after which he lived on the edge of the Great Field with his wife Catherine, by approval of nearby landowner Humphrey Barrett. Two of their children, Peter Robbins and Susan Robbins Garrison, raised large families here. Caesar Robins’ first house passed out of African Ownership in the end of the 19th century. Efforts are under way to preserve this home presently located at 334 Bedford Street.

Garrisons.
Jack Garrison was a self-emancipated person from New Jersey. He married Caesar Robbins’ daughter Susan and lived with Susan and their eight children in a second room added onto the Robbins’ house. A photograph of Jack Garrison hangs prominently in the Concord Museum.

Peter Hutchinson.
A descendant of former enslaved persons, Peter Hutchinson and his wife Nancy Dager of Danvers raised fived daughters (see #26). It is believed that Peter Hutchinson was the first African resident to vote in Concord in 1881 and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetary.

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Peter’s Path and Peter’s Spring.
Named after Peter Hutchinson.

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Brister’s Hill Road.
Named after Brister Freeman.

Brister and Fenda Freeman
After 25 years of enslavement, Brister Freeman became the second former enslaved person to own land in Concord. Brister’s Hill is named after the area where he and another former enslaved person purchased an acre of “old field.” Brister and his wife Fenda, who told fortunes, had three children. Brister worked as a day labororer and endured frequent harassment from locals and local officials. Impressed by what brister had been able to accomplish in such a hostile environment, Thoreau compares him in Walden to Scipio Africanus, the great Roman general.

Cato and Phyllis Ingraham
When local squire Duncan Ingraham moved to Medford in 1795, his man Cato asked if he could marry a local (currently or formerly) enslaved person named Phyllis and bring her along. Duncan replied that Cato could marry but only if he stayed behind in Concord, severed his ties with his master, and sought no further financial assistance from him. Cato chose Phyllis over a secure financial future and Duncan thus abandoned him to his fredom, providing him with only a small house and permission to live in it on an acre of sandy land in Walden Woods. In Walden, Thoreau bemoans Cato’s early death. He and his family died of diseases associated with malnutrition. Thoreau was inspired to live in Walden Woods due to these courageous individuals.

Zilpha (or Zipha) White
Formerly an enslaved woman, Zilpah White lived in a one-room house on the common land that bordered Walden Road. She made a living spinning flax into linen fibers. In Walden, Thoreau notes that, like other former enslaved persons, she too was harassed. He describes her living conditions as “somewhat inhumane.” And yet her ability to provide for herself at a time when few if any other Concord women lived alone was a great accomplishment.

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Thomas and Jennie Dugan
Thomas Dugan was a self-emancipated slave from Virginia. He was the third former enslaved person to own land in Concord. He and his first wife Catherine had five children. When Catherine died, Thomas married Jennie Parker of Acton, who may have been born in Africa, and after whom Nut Meadow Brook was renamed Jennie Dugan’s Brook, due to her and her husband’s contributions to the community. Thomas and Jennie Dugan had three children. One of them, Elisha Dugan, lost his father’s land and subsequently lived in the woods. He was memorialized by Thoreau in his poem The Old Marlborough Road. Thomas Dugan introduced the rye cradle to Concord and taught local farmers to graft apple trees.