I live close to Concord, Massachusetts, which is one of the more storied places in the United States. In April 1775, the initial conflict of the American Revolutionary war was fought on here on the old North Bridge (pictured below), after Paul Revere rode through.


In the 19th century, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne lived here. When Thoreau died, Emerson read the eulogy. When Hawthorne died, Emerson was a pallbearer. Emerson lived in the Old Manse (boathouse pictured below), which still stands today. Hawthorne rented it for a while, and Thoreau allegedly did the vegetable garden outside. Around the same time, Louisa May Alcott lived down the street and wrote Little Women, set in her house.

Here in Concord, Thoreau wrote Walden while living off the land around Walden Pond (pictured below) and he wrote Civil Disobedience while imprisoned in the Concord jail. The same Civil Disobedience that later Gandhi would read while crafting Satyagraha.

Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Alcott are buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.