Concord Lyceum (Concord, Mass.)

Organization of Concord, Mass., formed for the purpose of "improvement in knowledge, the advancement of Popular Education, and the diffusion of useful information throughout the community." On Dec. 3, 1828, at a meeting in the Centre District schoolhouse, a committee (Nathan Brooks, Samuel Burr, Samuel Hoar, John Keyes, Daniel and Lemuel Shattuck, Daniel Southmayd, Daniel Stone) was chosen to write a constitution, which was adopted Jan. 7, 1829. First officers of the Lyceum: Ezra Ripley, President; Deacon Reuben Brown and Josiah Davis, Vice Presidents; Ephraim Merriam, Treasurer.

(Cont.) Lemuel Shattuck and Phineas Allen, Secretaries; Samuel Burr, Cyrus Hosmer, Daniel Stone, Curators. The Concord Debating Club merged with the Lyceum Mar. 11, 1829. Early programs consisted of lectures and debates, later (post-Civil War) programs of musical and other entertainments. The Lyceum met in the old Academy building, the Centre schoolhouse, the vestries of the Congregational and Unitarian churches, and (finally) the Town Hall. Programs, held in the winter season of each year, were at first free to all town residents. In 1856, the ticket system of admission was adopted.

(Cont.) The Lyceum's most frequent speaker was Ralph Waldo Emerson; Henry David Thoreau also spoke. Other speakers included Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, James T. Fields, Louis Agassiz, Horace Greeley, Theodore Parker, Orestes Brownson, Frederic Henry Hedge, Henry Ward Beecher, James Freeman Clark, and Jones Very. During its first fifty years, the Concord Lyceum had some difficulty maintaining solvency. After World War I--the effective end of the Lyceum--other musical and dramatic organizations in Concord took over the Lyceum's entertainment functions.