Joshua Brooks House at Minute Man National Historical Park
The Joshua Brooks House is located in the Battle Road Unit of Minute Man National Historical Park in an area known as Brooks Village. There are three other Brooks-family houses within a quarter mile. For those in a vehicle, park in the Brooks Village parking lot on Route 2A (North Great Road). The Samuel Brooks House is right next to the parking lot. The Job Brooks House is a tenth of a mile away and on the same side of the street. The Noah Brooks House and Tavern and the Joshua Brooks House are on the opposite side of the very busy North Great Road, and there is not much shoulder area to stand on. Joshua’s house is .2 mile down the road.
If hiking or biking the Battle Road Trail, you will arrive at the back side of both the Samuel and Job Brooks houses. Samuel’s house can be reached via a path that connects the parking lot and the trail. Due to the possibility of picking up a tick, you’ll want to stay out of the tall grass as much as possible. Therefore, instead of traipsing through the grass to reach the Job Brooks house, I suggest taking the path out to North Great Road and then visiting all of the Brooks houses from there. None of them are open to the public on a regular basis, but you are welcome to stop and see them and are free to walk on the property grounds.
While the Joshua Brooks House is part of Minute Man National Historical Park, it did not exist when the Battles of Lexington and Concord took place on April 19, 1775. It was built five years later in 1780 by Deacon Joshua Brooks and then sold to his son, Joshua Jr., a member of the sixth generation of Brookses living in Concord. He was a Minute Man who fought and was wounded in the skirmish at the North Bridge, and he later went on to serve as a sergeant in the Continental Army.
Joshua Jr. settled in Lincoln and went on to have fourteen children. A tanner by trade, in his later years he was in serious debt and ended up mortgaging his house to his son Nathan. He died a few years later in 1825, and Nathan took ownership. The house stayed in the Brooks Family until 1862. After that it had a number of owners, with the last being Harry and Harriot Strum. They sold the house to the National Park Service in 1964 for inclusion in Minute Man National Historical Park.
With a few exceptions, use of any photograph on the National Park Planner website requires a paid Royalty Free Editorial Use License or Commercial Use License. See the Photo Usage page for details.
Last updated on September 5, 2023
