As a center of state government with nearly 300 years of recorded history, Concord has no shortage of relics from the past – from colonial era graveyards, to grand 18th-century homes, to the fine brick row of Main Street.

But the city has something of a hidden history, too, recorded by a markers that call attention to things that are no longer there or point to events that have left no trace.

For our tour of these monuments to absence, begin at Concord’s most conspicuous historic site: the State House. Sitting regally in the center of town, this building holds plenty of history of its own. But one of the State House’s most interesting pieces of the past is nearly hidden here. To find it, face the building’s Main Street entrance and poke behind the shrubs by the right corner of the façade (straight back from the John Hale statue.) There you’ll find two bronze plaques marking the spot where General Lafayette entertained “many veterans of the Revolution and the public” at a banquet held in his honor during his visit in 1825. One plaque notes that Lafayette planted a tree nearby to celebrate his trip to Concord. The so-called “Lafayette’s Elm” has long since fallen, but the New Hampshire Historical Society still owns a piece of its bark.

While you’re there, take a minute to admire the graceful brick house across the street, known as the Upham-Walker House and owned by the state. Bonus points if you can find the sign for Dr. Charles Walker’s old medical office amid the ivy.

A few blocks north along Main Street, directly across from the entrance to the Holiday Inn parking lot, there’s an obscure stone tablet that hints at Concord’s earliest colonial history. It marks the sport where Concord’s “first child” was born in 1728. The baby in question certainly was not the first one born in Concord – just the first white child whom the city’s historians chose to acknowledge. What was this child’s name? Was it a boy or girl? Who did this lonely first child play with? The tablet offers no answers.

Continue north along Main Street, just past the intersection with Route 393, and you’ll see the brick Walker School on your left and Bouton Park on the corner. The small park and its four markers note one of the most historic spots in the city. Concord’s first meeting house once stood here. The building, which was destroyed by fire in 1870, was the center of the early town’s spiritual and political life. New Hampshire’s delegates met here in 1788 to ratify the U.S. Constitution, and prominent visitors to Concord – including Presidents James Monroe and Andrew Jackson – prayed here. A plaque at the site gives an idea of what the Old North Meetinghouse looked like.

Back on Main Street, reverse direction and head back to the State House area. On your right, you’ll find two inglorious markers to houses that once stood along Main Street in two different eras. One marker, in front of the Hess gas station, notes the former location of the house of Edward Rollins, a congressman and senator during the Civil War. Further south, in front of Cindy Ann’s Cleaners, a tablet marks the location of the “First Block House” in Concord, built in 1726. These blockhouses, which were once scattered throughout the early town, served as defenses for Concord’s first white settlers, who would retreat there in the event of an Indian attack.

For another monument to the violent relations between Concord’s first settlers and local Indians, follow Pleasant Street for a couple miles west, past the high school. Just beyond the entrance to Concord Hospital’s emergency room, you’ll see a stone pillar, dedicated to five settlers “massacred August 11, 1746 by the Indians near this spot.”

Return to Main Street to find a humble monument to one of Concord’s most famous residents – former President Franklin Pierce. Pierce’s best-known Concord home, the Pierce Manse, is beautifully preserved on Horseshoe Pond on the north end of the city. That’s where Pierce and his family lived before he was elected to the White House. But after his one-term as president, Pierce returned to Concord to live in a mansion on South Main Street. But the house, which stood next to what is now the Waters Funeral Home, at 50 S. Main St., was torn down long ago; all that’s left is the elevated stone walkway, a few yards of rusted fencing, and a stone tablet set in a patch of lawn.

Daniel Barrick