What Makes History: New Stories from the Concord Museum Collection Unavailable

TUCKED between the pages of a nineteenth-century ledger are pieces of ephemera that perhaps unexpectedly tell the story of how a small Massachusetts town was defining its role in American history. Kept by Concord resident Cummings E. Davis in 1856, this ledger documented his work to collect objects connected to the town's history, from the battle of April 19, 1775, that launched the American Revolution to the personal belongings of his friend and neighbor Henry David Thoreau. Over the next thirty years, he would acquire hundreds of objects, displaying them to visitors and local residents, first in the Concord courthouse and later in a house on Lexington Road. In 1887, prominent figures in Concord recognized the significance of his collection and purchased it for the newly formed Concord Antiquarian Society, now operating as the Concord Museum. Many of the objects Davis collected continue to be on view at the Museum...