9. Keyes’s Description of the Town House

John Shepard Keyes (1821-1910) was powerful in and beyond Concord in the mid- to late nineteenth century. A Harvard-educated lawyer, he served as sheriff of Middlesex County, a delegate to the Republican convention at which Abraham Lincoln was nominated for the presidency, a United States marshal, a Massachusetts state senator, and a district court judge for Eastern Middlesex, and also held many public offices in Concord. President of the Concord Antiquarian Society, Keyes was deeply interested in local history. His manuscript Houses, & Owners or Occupants in Concord, 1885 forms part of a rich collection of John Shepard Keyes papers presented to the Concord Free Public Library primarily by Amelia F. Emerson, Raymond Emerson, and the heirs of Edward W. Forbes. As the section on the Town House in this work illustrates, Keyes was a man of strong opinion who did not hesitate to express what he thought.