WAYSIDE
Historic Site — 182 Walnut Street, Concord, Middlesex County, Massachusetts
Status: Operating · Access: Open to public
Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/wayside-massachusetts/

NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad.

Wayside is a historic site in Concord, Massachusetts, a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing. NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad. It sits in the archive under dark history, Underground Railroad history and the Underground Railroad. The dossier holds 3 documented facts — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. The site is open to visitors.

The Wayside is the only house in America that sheltered the Revolution, Little Women, and The Scarlet Letter. On April 19, 1775 it was Samuel Whitney's house — muster master of Concord's minute men, named in General Gage's orders as a place to search for arms — and the British column marched right past it on the Battle Road to the North Bridge. Seventy years later it was the Alcotts' 'Hillside,' where Louisa May lived the childhood she would turn into Little Women — Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy playing out in these rooms the scenes the book made immortal.
Hawthorne bought it from the Alcotts in 1852 and gave it the name it keeps — the only home he ever owned, where the author of The Scarlet Letter raised Una, Julian, and Rose and added the tower study at the rear where he wrote. The Lothrops came in 1883 — Harriett, who wrote the Five Little Peppers as 'Margaret Sidney,' and publisher Daniel — and preserved it deliberately as Hawthorne's house; their daughter Margaret, born at the Wayside in 1884, sold it to the Park Service eighty years later.
And between the literary layers the house kept its other register — in the 1840s the Alcotts aided at least one fugitive slave on the flight to freedom, in the same rooms where the girls staged their plays. It is now a Network to Freedom site among the park's April 19th witness houses: the building that watched the first day of the Revolution and housed three of the families who wrote America's literature.
The Wayside is the archive's authors file — the Concord house that Gage ordered searched in 1775, where the Alcotts hid a fugitive and lived Little Women, Hawthorne wrote in the tower, and Margaret Sidney was born into the house she preserved for the nation.

WHY THIS FILE MATTERS
The Wayside is the archive's three-families file — the Concord witness house of April 19, 1775, home successively to the Alcotts (Hillside), the Hawthornes (The Wayside), and the Lothrops, a Network to Freedom site that aided at least one freedom seeker.
A house that housed three literatures keeps its tower — the file's suggestion being that the Wayside's hold is the succession: the muster master's house that became the Alcott girls' stage, then Hawthorne's only home, then the preserved shrine the Lothrop daughter handed to the park.

HISTORY — 3 documented facts
· NPS includes this site in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. The record appears in 'Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01'. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry.
· Wayside is documented on the National Park Service Network to Freedom for its role in the Underground Railroad. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The record appears in 'NPS Network to Freedom listing'. The entry's timeline holds it; the lore holds the rest.
· The house’s history is documented. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. Sources including 'NPS Network to Freedom listing' carry the record. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from. The reports keep the address on the map.

SOURCES — 3 cited
· Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01 — National Park Service
  https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223
· NPS Network to Freedom listing — National Park Service
  https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm
· Underground Railroad — Wikipedia
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad

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