7 minute read
The Tale of Concord's Barrow Bookstore
BY JAIMEE LEIGH JOROFF
Welcome, dear readers, to the story of The Barrow Bookstore, a unique shop featuring rare and gently-read books down the lane at 79 Main Street, Concord, Massachusetts. For 54 years, the Barrow has been owned by three generations of women whose passion for history and literature personify Louisa May Alcott’s quote, “She is too fond of books and it has turned her brain.” Each owner has been embedded in the history of Concord, and we invite you now to come back in time to the beginning of Barrow’s tale; secrecy is of the essence, so quickly and quietly mount your horses and hold on.
Boston, April 18, 1775, near midnight: We are galloping in the wind next to solitary rider William Dawes. A tanner by trade, tonight, Dawes is an Express rider sent from Boston by patriot leader Dr. Joseph Warren to carry an urgent message to Lexington and Concord: The King’s troops are on the march, headed to Lexington where they will likely arrest patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock before pushing on to Concord to search the town.
Afraid that Dawes will be stopped, Warren sends Paul Revere on a different route to carry the same message.
We make it with Dawes to Lexington where he meets Revere and races on towards Concord. In Lincoln, Revere is captured in a trap, but Dawes escapes into the night and we fade into the mists of time with him and down his family tree until the 1960s when Claiborne Watkins and her husband, William Dawes — 4th great-grandson of the midnight rider— are walking through London. Along the River Thames, Claiborne saw a section of road lined with wooden wheelbarrows filled with books for sale. Recalls Claiborne, “The booksellers called them ‘Book Barrows’; I loved the idea.”
When Claiborne returned home to Concord, she rented the old train depot on Thoreau Street from Ernie Verrill (brother of Steve Verrill of Verrill Farms). Here, with her business partner Betty Woodward, Claiborne opened the Barrow Bookstore, and placed a Victorian wheelbarrow outside. The bookshop opened on July 12, 1971, on Henry David Thoreau’s 154th birthday. Claiborne recounts that “We bought as many Concord books as we could to try and keep the town’s history front and center.” Remembers Claiborne, “One of my most exhilarating moments was finding a little pamphlet, no more than 30 pages. On the title page I read the name of the printer, B. Franklin, Philadelphia, and I almost fell over! I was holding one of the surviving books published by Benjamin Franklin.”
Within Barrow Bookstore’s first decade, space was becoming an issue. Mr. Emerson’s lengthy orations were crowding other books, and Winnie the Pooh stories were politely requesting a shelf farther away from Hawthorne’s gothic New England tales whose judgmental puritans were distressing to Piglet. Claiborne thought, “Who can I ask if they have a space for the Barrow Bookstore? I immediately thought of Fritz Kussin,” Louisa May Alcott’s great-great-nephew who owned a building on Main Street. As a descendant of the Alcotts, Claiborne figured Fritz would share a love for Concord authors. And she was right; the move to 79 Main Street began. Claiborne’s husband built the bookshelves that still line the walls of the bookshop, and added a glass case that ironically held a first edition of Longfellow’s Tales of a Wayside Inn, containing the rhythmic, but inaccurate, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” which left out his ancestor, rider William C. Dawes.
In 1981, Pamela Fenn moved to Massachusetts where her ancestors had stepped off the Mayflower in 1620. Pam’s favorite writer is Nathaniel Hawthorne, and on her first day here, before unpacking, Pam visited The Old Manse where Hawthorne had lived from 1842-45. Says Pam, “A tour guide at the Manse told me about the Barrow Bookstore, and I went straight from the Manse to the Barrow.” There she met Claiborne and, like many visitors, felt right at home. For the next seven years, Pam worked at the Old Manse as a tour guide and then as the Museum Director. Having worked at a bookstore in College, Pam’s dream was to own a bookstore and when Claiborne and Betty were ready to retire, Pam purchased the Barrow Bookstore.
For the next 26 years, Pam curated the store’s collection of books from all genres and for all ages, ranging from reading to collector copies (such as first editions of Walden, Little Women, and more). Pam’s staff included Nancy Joroff, a teacher and former Director of Education at the Louisa May Alcott Orchard House. Nancy’s young daughter Aladdine often accompanied her the window and reading for hours.
Growing up in Concord, Aladdine (whose name came from a crystal-ball-reading fortune teller Nancy had visited in Ireland in the 1960s) lived in an historic house once occupied by Concord’s 19th-century bookseller Henry Whitcomb, and worked as a tour guide at Orchard House, The Old Manse, and the Wayside. Like Louisa May Alcott, her favorite authors include Charles Dickens, leading her to work for a time at the Dickens Museum in London. Today she is the President of the Greater Boston chapter of the Dickens Fellowship.
In 2013, ownership of the bookstore passed from Pam to Aladdine, who continued the legacy of fine book acquisitions and expanded the store’s rare collection. Drawn by the magnetism of Concord’s seemingly ever-present six degrees of separation of people and history, into Barrow came treasures including documents of mutinous ships lost at sea; a letter written by the Revolutionary War’s “Irish Lafayette” before his hand was cut off in a death-pact with his wife; original draft pages written by Thoreau and Emerson describing epic Norsemen and duels in the dark; pirated editions of Alcott’s Little Women; and a signed, aluminum bound, fire resistant copy of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury whose ancestor was accused of witchcraft by Betty Paris (now buried in Concord’s Old Hill Burying ground) and sentenced to hang by the Salem witch trial judge ancestors of Alcott and Hawthorne. (Adventure into some of these books’ backstories at YouTube.com/ BarrowBookstore).
Today, all staff at the bookshop are past or present historic interpreters at many of the Concord sites. Readers far and wide have befriended the bookstore through visits and online; many come for a book and leave with a community. In addition to providing a wide selection of books and literary gifts, the bookstore is a literary museum, with displays of special books that you can view or acquire.
Says Aladdine, “Whether it is a paperback or a first edition book, at the end of the day, the Barrow Bookstore’s most valuable stories are those of our reader friends; as Emerson said, ‘’tis the good reader that makes the good book.’”
For a list of sources, email barrowbookstore@gmail.com.
A Concord native, Jaimee Joroff is manager of the Barrow Bookstore in Concord Center, which specializes in Concord history, transcendentalism, and literary figures. She has been an interpreter at most of Concord’s historic sites and is a licensed town guide.
