What Makes a "Concordian?"
What does it means to be a Concordian? Who remains connected with Concord in the local collective memory after moving away or passing on? Who best represents the qualities associated with the town's self-image? The answer is multifaceted and subject to change. Life stories from throughout the town's history reflect the nuances of Concord identity, but provide no single, all-encompassing profile of what makes a Concordian.
Concord was settled in the 1630s by English immigrants whose children and children's children intermarried, resulting in a tightly-knit community where a web of family bonds contributed to the concern of one resident for another. In Concord, as in other early towns in the region, the flip side of this cohesion was local unwillingness to take responsibility for those who obviously did not belong to the town. The New England tradition of providing support for the local poor but not for needy outsiders seeking asylum and financial aid played itself out in the form of selective public assistance and sometimes warning out.
Immigrants Carve Out Their Place
In the nineteenth century, when the population became more mobile and the influx of new ethnic groups began to alter the composition of the community, those adaptable to local ways were incorporated with relative ease, while those whose customs were more alien remained outside the established power structure and social circle. Within a few generations, however, Irish, Scandinavians, and Italians were assimilated, threatening Yankee dominance.
Concord-born physician, statistician, and social historian Edward Jarvis (photo at right) spent his final years writing down both his memories of the town as he recalled it from his youth and the results of his research into its earlier social history. Among his published works, the article "Supposed Decay of Families in New England Disproved by the Experience of the People of Concord, Mass.," which originally appeared in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register for October 1884, stands out as a thinly veiled attempt to harness statistical methods to denial of oncoming heterogeneity. For Jarvis and others of his generation, real Concordians were characterized by English ancestry and long family connection with the town. Today, no one would claim that Concord is a remarkably diverse place, but the ethnic uniformity of earlier centuries is gone. Even now, however, when the term "old-timers" encompasses the descendants of the Irish domestics and Italian farm laborers who worried Jarvis, value is still placed on deep roots.
"Outsiders" Who Love Concord... And Those Who Don't
At times, newcomers have been put off by what they perceived as Concord's parochial clannishness. The town's strong sense of itself and its residents' intense engagement with local institutions and traditions have stifled some seeking acceptance on their own terms. In the 1850s, for example, Harriet Hanson Robinson -- wife of Concord-born journalist William Stevens Robinson (image below right) -- failed to find her niche here. As a single woman in Lowell in the 1830s, Harriet Hanson was a mill operative and a contributor to the Lowell Offering. After marriage, she shared with her husband a principled commitment to the abolition of slavery, and later in life became an ardent promoter of women's rights. From 1854 to 1857, the Robinsons and their children lived in Concord as renters of the Thoreaus' "Texas House" on Belknap Street.
Although her husband loved the town, and although she made friends, belonged to the Concord Female Antislavery Society, and took advantage of the Lyceum, Town Library, and a variety of social events, Harriet Robinson's feelings about Concord were mixed. In a diary entry made the year after moving to Malden, she revealed just how relieved she was to have left: "Concord is a very nice place ... But it is a dull old place. It is a narrow old place. It is a set old place. It is a snobbish old place. It is an old place full of Antideluvian people and manners ... The leaves never shake on the trees and the children never cry in the streets ... The women never go out, and the streets are full of stagnation. It was so still that walking up and down its streets filled me with horror. I used to feel that I must jump up and holler, or do something desperate to make a stir. A good place to be born & buried, but a terrible, wearing place for one to live." Concord clearly did not succeed in making a Concordian of Mrs. Robinson.
Harriet Robinson's experience suggests that willingness to appreciate Concord as it sees itself is important to an individual's identification with the town. Sculptor Daniel Chester French was not born here, and spent most of his adult life elsewhere. Nevertheless, he celebrated Concord's accomplishments and people in his work, and was in turn claimed by Concord as a local product. He began his career as a public artist with a commission by the town to create a monument for the 1875 centennial celebration of the Concord Fight -- the now iconic minute man statue, which made French's career, gave him good reason for lasting gratitude to Concord, and has ever since been a credit to the foresight of this place. His early work also included portrait busts of a number of locals, among them Ralph Waldo Emerson (a friend of the French family and an early supporter of young Dan's efforts), Simon Brown (editor of The New England Farmer and French's uncle by marriage), and Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar. In 1879, French built a studio next to his father's home on Sudbury Road, where he worked as his national reputation grew. Later, he lent his name to the support of art appreciation in Concord as president of the Concord Art Association. Today, he is regarded as one of the town's own, equal in every respect to any native. The combination of his public acknowledgment of Concord's significance and his own outstanding success in his chosen field makes French, for many, an exemplary Concordian.
Affluence Not a Factor in Real Community Respect
Although it unquestionably conveys privilege, affluence per se is not acknowledged as a factor in community respect. The historical sense of inclusive democracy that Emerson stressed in his 1835 bicentennial address has discouraged the open equation of money with influence. Nostalgically revisiting the Concord of his early nineteenth-century boyhood, Senator George Frisbie Hoar (a son of Samuel Hoar and brother of Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, photo at right) recollected in A Boy Sixty Years Ago (1898): "The town was as absolute a democracy, in the best sense of the word, as was ever upon earth. They esteemed each other because of personal character, and not on account of wealth, or social position, or holding office. The poorest boy in town was the equal of the richest in the school and in the playground." No doubt this comment was easier for a member of the elite to make than it would have been for a struggling farmer, but Hoar believed what he wrote.
In recent decades, some residents have expressed concern over skyrocketing real estate prices, which make wealth a prerequisite to residence, endanger the ability of old-timers to stay, and threaten to undermine commitment to traditional values. For the most part, however, money boosts position within the community only when coupled with an inclination to benefit local institutions and initiatives. By and large, Concordians admire civic-mindedness more than any other trait in their fellow townspeople. Since 1962, the annual Honored Citizen Award has encouraged public expression of Concord's regard for volunteer service to the town. Recipients have come from many walks of life, but all share a strong devotion to Concord and a disinterested desire to improve life here.
And yet, however much the people of Concord respect investment in community, they do not demand that all their neighbors serve as models of responsible citizenship. At times, in fact, they have demonstrated a remarkable tolerance for a wide variety of personal eccentricities in others who choose to live here.
Art Credits: Page designed by Windfall. Images courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections of the
Concord Free Public Library.
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