Colonel James Minot built the eastern section of this house in 1716 as his private home, and it stayed in family hands for generations, eventually passing to John Thoreau, maternal grandfather of Henry David Thoreau, in 1799. Thoreau himself lived here with his aunts from 1835 to 1837 while studying at Harvard. The building’s most consequential chapter came decades earlier, though.
On April 18, 1775, local militia leaders gathered in the central section, then a warehouse storing arms and provisions for the Concord minutemen, to plan their response as British troops marched toward the town. The fighting the next morning at the North Bridge became the opening battle of the Revolutionary War. John Maynard Keyes bought the three now-connected buildings at auction in 1889 and opened them as a hotel, and Jacqueline Kennedy stayed here in 1972 while visiting her daughter at nearby Concord Academy.