The Concord Pamphlet Collection

The Concord Pamphlet Collection encompasses many types of material touching on a wide range of topics.  It includes pamphlets, speeches, sermons, brochures, articles, reprints, serial publications, research papers, an array of ephemera (tickets and programs to special events, advertising and publicity material, menus, bank checks, and topical postage stamps among them), clippings, and sketches.  Illuminating Concord life from the town's settlement in 1635 to the present day, the collection consists of some three hundred archival boxes plus six oversize file drawers offering information about aspects of Concord's history, its authors and residents, organizations, politics and government, libraries, schools, churches, historic buildings and museums, hospital, and businesses.

Major Concord Pamphlet Topics 

  • Emerson and Emerson family 
  • Hawthorne and Hawthorne family 
  • William Torrey Harris 
  • Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, George Frisbie Hoar, Hoar family 
  • Edward Jarvis 
  • Thoreau, Thoreau family, Thoreau organizations 
  • Grindall Reynolds 
  • Ezra Ripley, Ripley family, Brook Farm 
  • Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Sanborn family 
  • William Willder Wheildon 
  • A. Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, Alcott and May families 
  • Daniel Chester French, French and Cresson families 
  • Concord people ( A-Z, authors and others not assigned separate classification numbers ) 
  • Politics and government 
  • Concord Free Public Library and its predecessors 
  • Schools ( public and private ) 
  • Description ( including geology, geography, plant and animal life, and tourist guides ) 
  • History ( including extensive material on the Battle of Concord and April 19th anniversary celebrations, on the North Bridge and surrounding area, and on the Minute Man National Historical Park; also, materials on special aspects of Concord history, such as farming, transportation, and Concord Lyceum ) 
  • Historic buildings 
  • Concord organizations ( extensive material relating to Concord Antiquarian Society and Concord Museum, to Concord churches, and to a wide range of other organizations, among them the Freemasons, Social Circle, Concord Choral Club and other musical organizations, Concord Players, Concord Art Association, Concord Woman's Club, temperance organizations, Thoreau Country Conservation Alliance and Walden Woods Project, Emerson Hospital, and social service organizations such as the Concord Soldiers' Aid Society and the Concord Friendly Aid Society ) 
  • Social life ( balls and parties ) 
  • Commerce 
  • Media and communications

Retrospective online cataloging of the Concord Pamphlet Collection was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Materials in the collection may be searched through the database of the Minuteman Library Network.