Concord
[key]. 1 city (2020 pop. 125,410), Contra Costa co., W
central Calif.; settled c.1852, inc. 1906. An eastern suburb in the San
Francisco Bay area, it has electronics and petroleum-refining industries. A
nearby U.S. naval ammunition depot was the site of the devastating Port
Chicago explosion of July, 1944.
2 Town (2020 pop. 18,491), Middlesex co., E Mass., a
high-income suburb of Boston, on the Concord River; inc. 1635. Electronic,
metal, and wood products are made there. The site of the Revolutionary
battle of Concord on Apr. 19, 1775 (see Lexington and Concord, battles of), is
marked by Daniel Chester French's bronze
Minuteman. Concord has many old houses, some opened as
memorials to noted occupants—Emerson, the Alcotts, Hawthorne, and
Thoreau—who made the town an important intellectual and literary
center (see transcendentalism) in the quarter century preceding the
Civil War. An antiquarian museum and the Old Manse, built in 1769 by
Emerson's grandfather and made famous by Hawthorne, and the place where
Ephraim Bull developed the Concord grape are there. Walden Pond, the site of
Thoreau's two-year sojourn in the woods, which is described in his
Walden (1854), is in Walden Pond State Park.
See W. B. Maynard, Walden Pond: A History (2004).
3 City (2020 pop. 44,019), state capital and seat of Merrimack co., S central N.H.,
on the Merrimack River; settled 1725–27, inc. as Rumford, Mass., in
1733 (Count Rumford later took
his title from this name) and as Concord, N.H., in 1765. Famous for its
granite, the city also has printing, millworking, and insurance industries
and plants making electronic, metal, dairy, and clay products. It became the
state capital in 1808, and its growth was further aided by the building of
the Middlesex Canal in 1815. St. Paul's school (preparatory) and the house
of Franklin Pierce (a museum) are in Concord. Mary Baker Eddy was born a few miles away, at
Bow.
4 City (2020 pop. 105,240), seat of Cabarrus co., central N.C., near the edge of the
Piedmont; settled 1796, inc. 1837. In a livestock and grain producing area,
it is also a cotton textile center. Other manufactures include plastics,
building materials, paper and food products, and optical fibers. Gold
discovered nearby in 1799 started the North Carolina gold rush. Concord is
the seat of Barber-Scotia College. Lowe's (formerly Charlotte) Motor
Speedway, a stock-car track, is there.
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