Collection Highlights

The Concord Museum’s outstanding collection has been recognized for its national significance by curators, historians, educators, and visitors for more than a century. Click through to view some of the highlights of the collection.

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Study

In 1930, the R.W. Emerson Memorial Association determined that the year-long demand for visitation by pilgrims to Emerson’s doorstep was better met at the Concord Museum than at the house, and sent the Study’s contents to an exact reproduction of the room at the Museum. The Study was the center of much of the “great…

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

As a young sculptor in Concord, Daniel Chester French hoped to secure portrait commissions and advance his career. In 1879, he convinced Ralph Waldo Emerson to sit for him over thirty times throughout the year and the resulting bust is arguably the best portrait sculpture, and perhaps the best portrait overall, of the famous writer.…

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Timepiece

The diamond head clock was a luxurious and expensive item when new, and the form was never produced in large numbers. William Munroe likely made this and the half-dozen known related cases for his brothers Daniel and Nathaniel. The elaborate decoration of this timepiece combines a Boston-made dial and decorative painted glass with a finely…

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King Ahasuerus and his Wife Queen Esther

This important needlework picture has long been listed in needlework books and elsewhere as the earliest signed and dated pictorial embroidery of American origin. Town records hold that Joseph Wheeler came to Concord in 1636-7 from Kent, England, and birth records indicate that his daughter, Rebeckah, with wife Sarah Merriam Wheeler, was born in September…

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Joined Cupboard

Attributed to the Harvard College Joiners (1638-1752) The cupboard has the tradition of belonging to Gregory Stone of Cambridge, and is recognized as the key monument of a group of six cupboards from the same shop tradition. Stone’s cupboard is attributed to one of three successive Harvard College joiners, each of whom is thought to…

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Looking Glass

Glass probably England; frame probably New England, 18th century This object holds significance as one of the few documented possessions of an 18th century African-American, Casy Minott (1732-1822). Casy Minott was possibly the slave of Timothy Minott (1692-1778) or his son Timothy (1726-18054), although more recent research indicates that a slave "Case" was actually owned…

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Uncle Tom and Little Eva

Figures like this, depicting two of the main characters of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, were produced by a number of English potteries taking advantage of the almost unprecedented popularity of Stowe’s work. In the parlor where they were meant to be displayed, these figures would have broadcast to visitors the homeowners’…

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Cann

Samuel Bartlett established himself as a silversmith with some difficulty in the unstable Boston climate of the early 1770s. He apprenticed in Samuel Minott's shop and then married and moved to Concord. He bought the old jail from the town in 1788 and lived and worked there until moving to Cambridge. His largest and perhaps…

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