The Concord Museum collection began around 1850 and was exhibited before the Civil War; only a handful of Americana collections can claim to be as old or as remarkably well-documented. The Concord Museum collection is a distinguished one containing numerous examples of 17th, 18th, and 19th-century decorative arts -- case furniture, tables, seating furniture, clocks, looking glasses, textiles, ceramics, and metalware -- all with histories linking them to first owners in Concord.

Highlights of the Museum's renowned collection include:

• The "one, if by land, and two, if by sea" lantern, immortalized by Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride.


• Artifacts from the American Revolution, including powder horns, muskets, cannonballs and fifes.


• The world's largest collection of Thoreau possessions, including furnishings from his cabin at Walden Pond.


• The contents of Ralph Waldo Emerson's study where he wrote his influential essays.