Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Concord (2.)

CONCORD, a town of the United States, in Middlesex county, Massachusetts, is 20 miles north-west of Boston by railroad. It is a quiet place of 2400 inhabitants, containing a good public library. The interest attached to the town arises from the prominent part its citizens took in the early revolutionary war. It was here, on the 19th April 1775, that the first blood was shed in the War of Independence (concurrent with the battle of Lexington), when an English detachment was driven from the town by Colonel Barrett at the head of some militia and “minutemen.” A granite obelisk, 25 feet in height, was erected in 1835 on the spot where the first English soldiers fell.