Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Parkman Tavern
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1979. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“About the 21st of Feb., says Gookin in the manuscript before quoted, " there befel another great trouble to the Christian Indians of Nashobah, who sojourned in Concord. The Council had by several orders empowered a committee, who, with consent of the selectmen of Concord, settled those Indians at that town, under the government and tuition of Mr.”
A History of the Town of Concord, Middlesex County, Massachusetts : from Its Earliest Settlement to 1832; and of the Adjoining Towns, Bedford, Acton, Lincoln, and Carlisle; Containing Various Notices of County and State History Not Before Published. (1835). Machine-read text.
one of 1100 National Register listings in Middlesex County · listed in 1979 · category: Building · one of 3 National Historic Landmarks in Middlesex County.
National Register reference number.79000358- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
What happened here
An account from the chapter on Concord town, The inset identifies its exact
source book and publication year.
Philip's War. - State of the Country. - Garrison Houses. - Expedition to Brookfield. - Proceedings of Government} and of the Town. - Lancaster burnt. - Christian Indians in Concord. - Feelings towards the Indians. - Abraham and Isaac Shepherd killed. - Groton burnt. - People remove to Concord. - Proceedings of Government.
The author of the following History, having had occasion several years since to consult some of the earlier town records in Concord, discovered many important facts and documents which were wholly unknown to the public, and very imperfectly to the inhabitants of the town itself; and it occurred to him that a series of communications in a periodical work, embracing them, would be interesting and valuable, and he immediately began to collect materials for this purpose. But, in the progress of his investigation, the quantity of interesting matter increased so much, that it was thought best it should be published in some other form than that originally intended. The result of his inquiries appears in the following volume. It has been compiled at such intervals of time as could be conveniently abstracted from the almost constant engagements of business.
Those only, who have been engaged in similar works, can be aware of the great labor required to collect the materials for a volume like this, and arrange them for the press. And the difficulty and labor have been much increased in this instance by the imperfections of the town and church records. The first volume of the records of the town, containing its proceedings prior to 1696, about sixty years after its first settlement, is lost ; and likewise the proceedings of the church prior to 1738, more than one hundred years after its organization. There is however in the clerk's office an old volume, containing an imperfect record of several grants of land, and a few unconnected proceedings of the town ; with an incomplete list of marriages, births, and deaths, prior to 1696. This renders the early history of the town, less perfect than it would have been, had the records been preserved, though from other sources much important information has been obtained. The early records and documents in the offices of the Secretary of the Commonwealth and of the county of Middlesex, and the private papers of individuals, and various other scattered fragments of traditionary, manuscript, and printed history have, with great labor and no little expense, been consulted, which, though they do not furnish a complete history, have been found interesting and important, and in some respects supply the place of town records. Traditions, however, are often contradictory, tending to embarrass rather than to elucidate. They should be depended upon only as leading the investigator towards the truth, which, on further inquiry and comparison of different traditions with records, may be discovered. I have seldom been willing to state a fact positively, unless verified in this way. A tradition has prevailed in Concord, that the early records of the town were burnt ; and this is said to have taken place when part of the first settlers removed to Connecticut. If this were true, it could not apply to the town records from 1650 to 1696, nor to any part of the church records prior to 1738. This tradition is undoubtedly incorrect. The town records were destroyed in some other way, and, if burnt, it must have occurred subsequently to 1696. The loss of the church records was probably occasioned by the difficulty in the church detailed in the following History.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 48 fires within 5 miles of Parkman Tavern between
1997 and 2020, burning about 29 acres in total. None started naturally. 3 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Debris and open burning
25
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
10
Power generation/transmission/distribution
4
Railroad operations and maintenance
4
Arson/incendiarism
3
Equipment and vehicle use
1
Other causes
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 819 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Parkman Tavern between 1898 and
1975: 464 Animalia, 227 Plantae, 120 Fungi, 4 Protozoa, 3 Chromista, 1 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. B. Seymour & M. D. Feigley, A. E. Feldman and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
6 workings within 5 miles of Parkman Tavern: 4 past producers, 2 producers.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Concord, the town this property stands in, in 36 storm reports between 1997 and 2024: 26 thunderstorm wind, 4 flood, 3 lightning, 1 hail.
The reports record 12 injuries. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A tornado developed within an area of showers and thunderstorms moving through southern New England. This tornado touched down near the Cambridge Turnpike and headed northeast. Most of the damage was concentrated in an area beginning near the intersection of Lexington Road and Alcott Road and continuing up to the neighborhood of Alcott and Independence Roads. Numerous trees were uprooted or had the tops sheared off. These subsequently blocked roads, damaged homes, and downed power lines, cutting off power to the neighborhood. In addition, utility poles were downed either from the wind or from the downed power lines. Thirty-nine houses in this area were damaged to some degree. Only one house suffered significant structural damage. The tornado continued for a short distance beyond this neighborhood before lifting. The historical home of Louisa May Alcott and her family was right next to the tornado path but was not damaged.
Trees, wires, and poles were downed throughout Concord, closing several roads, including: Elm Street, Crescent Street, MacArthur Road, and Ornac Road near Route 2.
Sudbury Road in Concord was flooded at Heath's Bridge. The Cambridge Turnpike was also flooded. In Framingham, the intersection of Routes 126 and 9 was flooded. A car was stranded in flood waters on Bent Road in Sudbury.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
1,871 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The Parkman Tavern is located at the corner of Sudbury and Powder Mill Roads in the Town of Concord adjacent to a one and a half acre pond. It is a two and a half story five bay center entrance wood framed structure sheathed with clapboards. A central chimney with a corbelled cap rises through a ridge roof. The foundation is fieldstone. A modern one story shed-roof ell which replaced an earlier barn extends from its northeast corner. It is believed that the house was constructed in the seventeenth century and remodeled in 1770 and 1820.
The early date is supported by several features: the position of the chimney in front of the ridge; the fenestration of the side ele- vations with paired windows placed toward the front and presumably older portion of the structure; and interior details such as feather edged sheathing and cham- fered beams. The present appearance of the facade is the result of a ninteenth century remodeling and reflects the popularity of the Greek Revival style. The entrance is framed by full length side lights and a shallow pediment and is flanked on either side by two windows. The three windows of the second story repeat the side light pattern of the front door. 6/9 double hung sash appears throughout the building. The window surrounds and cornerboards are formed of simple flush boarding.
The molded cornice has short returns and is raked in the gable ends. Inside the stairway leading to the cellar are traces of much earlier stairs, going in the opposite direction, possibly at one time to a buttery. The cellar door in the dining room dates from the 17th century. Upstairs there are two large chambers. The east bedroom contains 17th century vertical feather-edged sheathing.
/ARCHITECT George wheeler 1659 STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE The Parkman Tavern possesses integrity of design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association. It is associated with events which have contributed to the broad patterns of our history, with persons important in Concord's past and it embodies many of the distinctive characteristics of first period construction ex- panded by eighteenth and ninteenth century owners. It is one of the oldest houses in Concord and stands on its original site. During most of its history, it was owned and occupied by the Wheeler family, one of the earliest, largest and oldest Concord families It is believed that the core of the house was built in 1659 by George Wheeler for his son William at the time of his marriage.
George had arrived in Concord in the 1640's, and purchasing much of the southwestern section of town known as Nine Acre Corner (where the Parkman Tavern is located) from Peter Bulkely, quickly became one of the larger landowners. He was elected selectman in 1660. The house remained in Wheeler ownership until 1770 when Amos Wheeler sold it to William Parkman, a wealthy Boston merchant. Parkman was one of the messengers sent to warn the inhabitants of neighboring towns that the British were coming on April 19, 1775. He served as deputy sherrif of the county for most of the twenty-five years he lived at Nine Acre Corner. He became deacon of the First Church in 1788, and also served as the town's first postmaster. The house takes its name from this period when it was operated as a tavern.
Nineteenth century accounts described the tavern as "a great place of resort for teamsters, who in those days did all the business of transportation for the county.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 79000358, 10 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
Block
