MA -- Minute Man NHP -- The Wayside (Orchard House and Wayside):
- Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
- Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon
underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
- Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
- Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 3.142.96.146 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
- Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
|
[1]
 MMWAY_080607_02.JPG
|
[2]
MMWAY_080607_07.JPG
|
[3]
MMWAY_080607_23.JPG
|
[4]
MMWAY_080607_29.JPG
|
[5] MMWAY_080607_47.JPG
|
[6] MMWAY_080607_49.JPG
|
[7]
MMWAY_080607_62.JPG
|
[8] MMWAY_080607_67.JPG
|
[9] MMWAY_080607_73.JPG
|
- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- MMWAY_080607_02.JPG: Louisa May Alcott's
Orchard House
Alcott
Home of
"Little Women"
- MMWAY_080607_07.JPG: The Wayside:
On April 19, 1775, fighting between Colonists and British soldiers ignited the American Revolution. On that day, the house in front of you, today known as "The Wayside," was owned by Samuel Whitney, Muster Master of the Concord Minute Men., During the 19th century, The Wayside was home to authors who kept the spirit of the Revolution alive through the creation of a unique American literary identity.
In 1845, educator and philosopher Bronson Alcott bought the house and named it "Hillside." His daughter, Louisa May Alcott, wrote his first published work here. Her classic, "Little Women," is largely based on her childhood at Hillside.
In 1852, Hillside was purchased by author Nathaniel Hawthorne who renamed it "The Wayside." It was the only home he ever owned. Hawthorne added the distinctive tower, where panoramic views inspired his writing.
Daniel and Harriett Lothrop purchased The Wayside in 1883; they wished to preserve the house because of its associations with America's literary heritage. Mrs. Lothrop, writing under the pen name Margaret Sidney, authored the "Five Little Peppers" series.
Exhibits in the Wayside Barn depict the authors who lived at The Wayside and their connection to American history and the community of Concord authors. Tours begin in the barn.
- MMWAY_080607_23.JPG: The Wayside
- MMWAY_080607_29.JPG: The Wayside:
The Wayside, "Hillside" as the Alcotts called it, sheltered two fugitive slaves during the winter of 1846-1847 as they fled north to freedom in Canada. A young Louisa May Alcott learned firsthand lessons about slavery that would influence her life and writing.
The Wayside, a unit of Minute Man National Historical Park, 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.
-- Designated May 17, 2001
- MMWAY_080607_62.JPG: Casey's Home
In 1775 Casey was Samuel Whitney's slave. When revolution came, he ran away to war, fought for the colonies, and returned to Concord a free man.
- Wikipedia Description: Orchard House
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Orchard House is a historic house museum in Concord, Massachusetts, US. It was the longtime home of Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) and his family, including his daughter Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), who wrote and set her novel Little Women (1868–69) there.
The four daughters - Anna (the oldest), Louisa (one year younger), Elizabeth (three years younger than Louisa), and Abigail (the youngest, five years younger than Elizabeth) - lived in Orchard House from 1858-1877.
History
The Alcotts had first moved to Concord in 1840, although they left in 1843 to start Fruitlands, a utopian agrarian commune in nearby Harvard. The family returned in 1845 and purchased a house named "Hillside," but left again in 1852, selling to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who renamed it The Wayside.
The Alcotts returned to Concord once again in 1857. They moved into Orchard House - which was then a two-story clapboard farmhouse - in the spring of 1858. At the time of purchase the site included two early eighteenth-century houses on a 12-acre (49,000m2) apple orchard. Consequently, the Alcotts named the property "Orchard House." "'Tis a pretty retreat," Bronson Alcott wrote soon after moving in, "and ours; a family mansion to take pride in, rescued as it is from deformity and disgrace."
Bronson Alcott made significant changes to the building. He installed alcoves for busts retrieved from his failed Temple School, repaired the staircase, installed bookcases, constructed a back studio for his youngest daughter (May's) artwork, and installed a rustic fence around the property. He also moved a smaller tenant house to adjoin the rear of the main house, making a single larger structure. While the home was being renovated, the family rented rooms next door at The Wayside while the Hawthornes were living in England. Later, Lydia Maria Child visited the house and recorded her thoughts: "The result is a house full of queer nooks and corners and all manner of juttings in and out. It seems as if the spirit of some old architect had brought it from the Middle Ages and dropped it down in Concord...The whole house leaves a general impression of harmony, of a medieval sort."
Orchard House is adjacent to The Wayside on the historic "American Mile" roadway toward Lexington, and is less than a half-mile from Bush, the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, where Henry David Thoreau and the Alcotts were frequent visitors.
The Alcotts in Residence
Orchard House was the most permanent home of the Alcotts, with the family in residence from 1858 to 1877. During this period, the family included Bronson, his wife Abigail May, and their daughters Anna, Louisa, and May. Elizabeth, the model for Beth March, had died in March 1858, just weeks before the family moved in.
Orchard House, 1941
The Alcott girls befriended the Hawthorne children, who lived next door, though Nathaniel Hawthorne himself was elusive. Bronson Alcott was disappointed, and recorded: "Nobody gets a chance to speak with him unless by accident." However, he added, "Still he has a tender kindly side, and a voice that a woman might own, the hesitance is so taking, and the tones so remote from what you expected."
The Alcotts were vegetarians, and harvested fruits and vegetables from the gardens and orchard on the property. Conversations about abolitionism, women's suffrage, and social reform were often held around the dining room table. The family performed theatricals using the dining room as their stage while guests watched from the adjoining parlor.
The parlor was a formal room with arched niches built by Bronson to display busts of his favorite philosophers, Socrates and Plato. On May 23, 1860, Anna married John Bridge Pratt in this room.
The youngest daughter, May, was a talented artist. Her bedroom contains sketches of angelic, mythological, and biblical figures on the woodwork and doors. In Louisa's room, May painted a panel of calla lilies as well as an owl on the fireplace. Copies of Turner landscapes by May adorn various rooms in Orchard House.
In 1868, Louisa May Alcott wrote her beloved classic novel, Little Women, in her room on a special "shelf desk" built by her father. Set within the house, its characters are based on members of her family, with the plot loosely based on the family's earlier years and events that transpired at The Wayside. Also written in the house were Bronson Alcott's Ralph Waldo Emerson (1865; published 1882), Tablets (1868), Concord Days (1872), and Table Talk (1877).
On the grounds to the west of the house is a structure designed and built by Bronson Alcott originally known as "Hillside Chapel," and later as "The Concord School of Philosophy." Operating from 1879 to 1888, the School was one of the first highly successful adult education centers in the country.
In 1877, Louisa May Alcott bought a home on Main Street for her sister Anna. After Mrs. Alcott's death in the same year, Louisa and her father moved into the home as well. Orchard House was then sold to long-time family friend William Torrey Harris in 1884.
Orchard House Today
Orchard House is open for guided tours daily, with the exceptions of Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and January 1 and 2. An admission fee is charged.
External video Tour of Orchard House, June 19, 2017, C-SPAN
The exterior looks much as it did in the Alcotts' day. Care has been taken to keep extensive structural preservation work invisible. All of the furnishings are original to the mid-nineteenth century - with roughly 75% belonging to the Alcott family - and the rooms look very much as they did when the Alcotts were in residence.
The dining room contains family china, portraits of the family members, and paintings by May, along with period furnishings. The parlor is decorated with period wallpaper and a patterned reproduction carpet, while family portraits and watercolors by May adorn the walls. Abigail May's bread board, mortar and pestle, tin spice chest, and wooden bowls are displayed on the hutch table in the kitchen. Other original kitchen features include a laundry drying rack designed by Bronson and a soapstone sink bought by Louisa. The study is furnished with Bronson's library table, chair, and desk. The parent's bedroom contains many of Abigail May's possessions, including photographs, furniture, and handmade quilts.
Orchard House has continued the tradition of Mr. Alcott's Concord School of Philosophy by hosting "The Summer Conversational Series" since 1977, and has recently added a "Teacher Institute" component. The Hillside Chapel is also used for youth programs, poetry readings, historical reenactments, and other special events.
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
- Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
- Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].
