Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Damon Mill
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.79000360- 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 45 fires within 5 miles of Damon Mill between
1997 and 2020, burning about 28 acres in total. None started naturally. 4 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
23
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
8
Arson/incendiarism
4
Power generation/transmission/distribution
4
Railroad operations and maintenance
3
Recreation and ceremony
2
Equipment and vehicle use
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 756 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Damon Mill between 1898 and
1975: 479 Animalia, 171 Plantae, 98 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
14 workings within 5 miles of Damon Mill: 9 past producers, 3 producers, 1 unknown, 1 occurrence.
3 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Copper. 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
3,506 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 Damon Mill is bounded on the north and west by the Assabet River and on the south by Main Street (Route 62). Pond Lane which was part of the original road from Concord to Lancaster separates one free standing building from the rest of the mill complex on the east. The property includes the adjacent river bed and diversionary dam as well as the spillway that formerly diverted water through the power canal running parallel to Pond Lane and under the main structure. The mill itself consists of two structures. The main complex is formed of eight attached sections ranging in height from one to six stories. Another three story building stands to the east of Pond Lane. All construction is of exterior brick bearing walls with interior timber framing.
The foundations are granite with a granite water table. Fenestration which originally consisted mainly of double hung 12/12 sash is severely deteriorated and in many cases openings are boarded or bricked in. Roofing material is currently asphalt shingle. Building #3 forms the core of the main complex. It was originally four stories in height and consisted of a main block with a gabled roof and monitor and a two bay cross-axial pavillion at its western end. A second cross-axial pavillion with a gable masking the monitor stood on high ground at the eastern end. The roof was later raised and two stories added to the main block and western end, and one story added to the eastern end.
The building is Italianate in style with design elements consisting of stitled segmental arched window openings, quoined corners and a projecting bracketted roofline. Building #2 which stands to the north is five stories in height and identical in design to #3.
/ARCHITECT Elbridge Boyden The Damon Mill in Concord was owned and operated by Edward Damon, a man prominent in social and civic as well as industrial affairs. It stands on a site which has been associated with Concord's industrial development since the seventeenth century. A bog iron works operated in the area c. 1660, succeeded by grist and saw mills in the eighteenth century. John Brown purchased the site in 1808 to build a cotton mill. This was a turning point from a mill site serving the surrounding agricultural needs to a mill site serving the local citizenry. It was the real beginning of the site's development as a center of local industry and of the local economy. By the mid-nineteenth century Edward Damon owned the site and had constructed a wood frame mill to produce wool.
When this complex burned in 1862 Damon engaged Elbridge Boyden, a Worcester architect of national repute, to design a new brick mill. One of Boyden's better known Massachusetts buildings is the Mechanics Hall (National Register) in Worcester. Boyden's design was for a handsome Italianate structure enriched by quoined corners, stilted segmental arched windows and bracketted cornice lines. Although the mill has been expanded, it retains many of its important original features. The mill has recently been purchased by the Mill Square Partnership whose principals include a great grandson of Edward Damon. Atter being used as a warenouse and then _ying vacant for six years, the mill will be rehabilitated for multi-commercial, office and light industrial use.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 79000360, 27 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.
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