Answer: False. Alcott Elementary School is named after Louisa’s father, Amos Bronson Alcott, who was the superintendent of Concord schools from 1859-1864.

Answer: Sanborn Middle School. Born in 1831 (died 1917), Franklin Benjamin Sanborn was a journalist, writer, teacher, and abolitionist. A Harvard graduate, Sanborn was friends with Emerson and Thoreau, and moved to Concord in 1854 when he became headmaster of a small co-ed school. Located at today’s 49 Sudbury Road, his school’s students included the young Louisa May Alcott and her siblings. Sanborn was also an ardent abolitionist and supporter of John Brown. Following Brown’s failed raid on the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, federal marshals showed up at night outside of Sanborn’s Concord home and attempted to arrest him on suspicion of being one of six men secretly backing Brown’s endeavors. As a struggling, protesting, and handcuffed Sanborn was carried by marshals to a carriage, Sanborn’s sister started screaming, alerting Concord neighbors who came to Sanborn’s aid, wrenching him away from the deputies and harassing the deputies out of town.

Answer: d) Meow-wow! The answer is T.S. Eliot. Eight years after he wrote Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, (which became the basis for Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical, Cats), T.S. Eliot delivered a speech at Concord Academy’s graduation ceremony. Established in 1922 as a girl’s school for grades 1-12, the school was still small, and Eliot spoke to a graduating class of 17 seniors. Eliot’s presence at Concord Academy was arranged by his friend and Concord Academy teacher Emily Hale, with whom he had a multi-decade and extremely confusing (for her) relationship.

Answer: The Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm. Brothers John Charles and Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr., inherited America’s first landscape architectural business from their father, Frederick Law Olmsted. In 1901, at the invitation of Middlesex School’s founder Frederick Winsor, the brothers designed the school’s campus.

Answer: d) Nathaniel Hawthorne. Born July 4, 1804, Hawthorne celebrated an Independence Day birthday. On July 9, 1842, Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody in a small wedding held in a Boston bookshop owned by Sophia’s older sister, Elizabeth. Following the ceremony, the newlyweds took a carriage to Concord, MA, where they moved into the Old Manse on Monument Street. Renting the home from the Emerson family, the Hawthornes lived in the Manse from 1842-45.

Answer: All of them!

Answer: b) Lockjaw. On January 1, 1842, Henry David Thoreau’s older brother, John, accidentally cut himself with a rusty razor while shaving. Lockjaw (another name for a tetanus infection) set in, causing tightness of the facial muscles and hindering his ability to breathe and swallow. John died eleven days later in Henry’s arms. Tetanus vaccines were developed 82 years later in 1924 and by the 1940s had become a common immunization.

Answer: c) Flute manufacturer. Thoreau played the flute but he did not manufacture them. (Thoreau’s flute may be seen on display at the Concord Museum.)

Answer: Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) had three siblings: Helen (1812-1849); John, Jr., (1815-1842); and Sophia (1819-1876).

Answer: b) 15 stars. With a star representing each state, the 1794 Flag Act added two additional stars to reflect Vermont and Kentucky being admitted into the Union.