The American Revolution Round Table hosted a panel discussion attended by 60 people at the Visitor Center of the Minute Man National Historical Park on Monday, May 18, to discuss the future of Concord’s Wright Tavern. The panel, moderated by Melvin H. Bernstein, featured Jayne Gordon, past director of education and public affairs at the Massachusetts Historical Society and teacher of the Concord history course required for licensed tour guides; and Professor Robert Gross, Draper Professor of Early American History at the University of Connecticut and author of The Minutemen and Their World.
Leslie Wilson, Curator of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library, was unable to attend, but submitted a written statement, proposing what she called “long-term local stewardship . . . a ‘Strawberry Banke‘ approach” to historical preservation and interpretation of the Tavern. She summarized the Tavern’s history, from the 17th-Century ownership of the land by Rev. Peter Bulkeley, the first minister of First Parish in Concord, to the building of the Tavern by Concord selectman Ephraim Jones. Jones sold it to Thomas Munroe, whose kinsman William Munroe would found the Concord Free Public Library over a century later. Daniel Taylor bought the Tavern from Munroe in 1766, but the townspeople called it by the name of tavern-keeper Amos Wright, and the name stuck.
Timothy Jacoby, representing the Trustees of First Parish Donations, explained First Parish’s mission to maintain the Wright Tavern, donated to First Parish in the 1880s by Concord philanthropists Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar and Reuben Rice. He said the Trustees are in “preliminary discussions” about the next steps for the historic property.
Here’s the text of Henry Schwan’s May 21 article in the Concord Journal about this meeting: JournalMay21WrightTavern
The Wright Tavern 