The Old Manse

The Old Manse 2010

 http://www.thetrustees.org/places-to-visit/greater-boston/old-manse.html

Concord is a town best known for its revolutionary history, so what better place to go and see a historic house than right next to the historic North Bridge, where locals defended their town from the marching redcoats and forced a British retreat back to Boston beginning the Revolutionary War? (check out this blog on the battle at the North Bridge: http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2010/04/real-fight-at-concord-bridge.html) Sitting just yards from this historic site is the Old Manse, a term meaning the minister’s house. It was in this very place on April 19th in 1775 that minister William Emerson watched from his window as the British were openly fired on and the War for Independence began. For more information on the role of Concord in the American Revolution check out Robert A. Gross’s book The Minutemen and Their World (summary at: http://bookstove.com/historical-fiction/the-minutemen-and-their-world-by-robert-gross/)

The Old Manse is accessible by car (Take Rt. 2 West. Where Rt. 2 takes sharp left, continue straight onto Cambridge Turnpike. At end, turn left onto Lexington Rd. to Concord Center. Turn right to take Monument St. north 0.5 mi) and is open to the public mid-April through October, 10AM – 5PM, Mon - Fri, and weekends from 10AM - 5PM on Saturdays and from 12Noon – 5PM on Sundays. From November through March, weather permitting, walk-in tours and pre-booked group tours are available on Thursdays and Fridays at 2PM, 3PM, and 4PM, and on weekends from 12 Noon – 4:30PM. Tours last about an hour and cost $8 per adult; $5 per child (6-12); and $7 for seniors and students with valid ID. If visitors want to make a day trip out to Concord to see the sites, this one is not far from the Orchard House, the Wayside Inn, and the Minuet Man National Park. It resides 10 minutes from downtown Concord where there are many cute restaurants and shops for the interested tourist. It is also only 6.5 miles from the historic town of Lexington, with which it has gone down in history as the location for the short heard round the world.

The Old Manse housed many famous historic families over its centuries of existence: Ripley, Bliss, and Emerson; but the couple most beloved and focused on by the house tour is Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne. The original house was built in 1770 for minister William Emerson. Initially the Minister’s house was closer to the church but Emerson desired to move his home slightly away from the center of the town. The Emerson family, which merged with the Bliss family and the Ripley family over time, kept the house in their possession until the 19^th century when Ralph Waldo Emerson called this place his home. It was here where Emerson would draft his famous essay “Nature” from an upstairs room. (link to text: http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/emerson/nature-contents.html) Later Emerson would rent his family home to his good friend Nathaniel Hawthorne who wrote a tribute to the homestead called Mosses from an Old Manse. (link to text: http://sparks.eserver.org/books/oldmanse.pdf) Hawthorne and his wife Sophia started their married life here.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Signature

This tour begins in the back of the home as groups enter through the kitchen. This seems to be a trend in the way that historic houses are entered since all of the previously reviewed houses also begin in the kitchen area of the place. My guess is that it is easier to add a visitor center onto the back of the homes so that its architecture is not altered by modern additions, I also think it would be hard on the structure for groups to enter through the front door if the house is not properly secured and outfitted for such a thing. I was very excited for this tour, I had heard many good things from colleagues that the tours given here are interesting and entertaining.  I will state right now that I heartily disagree with those recommendations; this was one of the worst house tours I have ever been on.

To begin with the tour guide was possibly the oldest person I have ever met and I was not convinced that she wasn’t going senile. She rambled on and on and on about a set of water jugs hanging from the staircase before we even got into the first room. As a historian of the early American era, I usually am fairly adept at placing stories into a time frame and creating a timeline of the people and events that take place inside a given house while I am taking a tour. Yet even I could not figure out what these water jugs were significant for or why she was telling us about them and some fire before even explaining the timeframe of the house and its occupants. After a good ten minutes waiting in the hall for her to move, the guide finally brought the group into the first room where she promptly plopped herself down on a chair. Horrified I asked if the furniture in the house were historic artifacts and her response was that only about 20% of the items were originally to any of the occupants, the rest were historic reproductions. Somewhat mollified, I assumed that she was sitting in a reproduction. Three rooms later I realized that she didn’t seem to have any idea, which pieces were original and which were reproductions. She also didn’t seem to care if people touched the furniture! One elderly woman decided to sit on one of the upstairs beds, the guide told her that technically that was an artifact and she shouldn’t sit there but that she would let her sit there anyway! What sort of training do these docents have? What kind of museum is this? After seeing the disrespect that this guide had for the artifacts I had trouble paying any attention to her after this. I was unconvinced of her accuracy in the stories about the Hawthorns that she was relaying, and I doubted anything she told the group about the artifacts because she clearly lacked background in proper museum etiquette, let alone background in working in a museum. Not only did the guide allow visitors to touch everything, she also couldn’t keep her stories straight and often referred to Hawthorne living in the house during the Revolution, which is impossible (Hawthorne lived from 1804-1864) After leaving the house, the friend I was with was so confused about the house’s history that she had to pull out her iphone to google it, I don’t think a museum is doing their job is Wikipedia gives more accurate information than their docents. Check out the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Manse

Once again there was very little use of media, even the website does not provide a virtual tour or any sort of podcasts or videos. Initially I was inclined to just write off this house and say it doesn’t need media because it is just so bad, but I decided that wasn’t fair to the museum itself, only the tour guide was intolerable. I think this house could benefit from providing more content on their website. A timeline would be greatly appreciated as well as maybe providing podcasts of the more famous works that were produced within the house. I know that some works were very long but excerpts from Emerson’s “Nature” with an explanation of the transcendentalist movement could provide a lot of very useful background for people who are not versed in the literary movement of the 19^th century and who were not able to get good answers on their tour. Maybe even using social media to find better docents could greatly benefit this house. Facebook is a good way of determining who is interested in the subject matter and a good place to advertise jobs to students who may want to intern or work at a place like this. Using facebook or something similar could provide a larger pool of volunteer candidates, therefore allowing the house to diversify its staff and hopefully provide them with better docents.

Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne

The only interesting thing about this house is the etchings on the windowpanes in the dining room. Sophia Hawthorne used her diamond wedding ring to scratch lines of text and poetry into two of the windowpanes, leaving the only real traces of her presence in the house. If it were not for these small scratches I would say that this house lost everything that made it a piece of history because the interpretation was just so terrible. Historic houses have a terrible reputation for being dull and dry, just like the subject of history. I joined the museum field to help counter this experience because I know that if properly expressed history can come alive and inspire people. It is places like the Old Manse that make me feel like my goals are in vain because when a home cannot evoke interest what hope does a textbook have?

View of the Old Manse from the river