The Robbins House joined the Bench by the Road Project of the Toni Morrison Society by placing the fifth bench in the Series in honor of Caesar Robbins (and his descendants), an early African American homeowner in Concord, Massachusetts. This house was the home of his descendants and on the morning of May 21st, 2011, the house was moved from 324 Bedford Street back closer to its original location by the Old Manse in Concord.
The Bench in honor of Caesar Robbins and his descendants will be a constant reminder of all who visit Concord of the contributions of the Robbins family to the town and to the cause for freedom in the United States.
![Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? We have you covered with a little Robbins house trivia. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a poem entitled Peter’s Field. Peter’s Field most likely referenced Peter Hutchinson, who was the last African American owner of The Robbins House. Peter purchased the home in 1852 and lived with his wife, Nancy, and several of their children in the home until 1868. Emerson described Peter’s farm, and by extension the original area of farmland attached to The Robbins House out in the Great Field like this:
KNOWS he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn?]
That field by spirits bad and good,
By Hell and Heaven is haunted,
And every rood in the hemlock wood
I know is ground enchanted.
[In the long sunny afternoon
The plain was full of ghosts:
I wandered up,
I wandered down,
Beset by pensive hosts.
For in those lonely grounds the sun
Shines not as on the town,
In nearer arcs his journeys run,
And nearer stoops the moon.
There in a moment I have seen
The buried Past arise;
The fields of Thessaly grew green,
Old gods forsook the skies.
Happy Reading!](http://robbinshouse.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)