Located near the heart of the Concord, Mass., center, the Captain John Adams (1776-1836) home was built in 1817.

A shopkeeper, Adams moved here from Acton with his wife and three spirited daughters. He was said to have been “large and handsome,” and spent much of his time playing checkers.

The family left Concord in 1831, after Adams sold his business and moved to Lowell.

It became a two-family home for a while with its occupants including Nehemiah Ball, town constable, tax collector, a church deacon, who served as town clerk and worked as an investor. Residents changed over the years, but it was William Henry Brown (1849-1944) who converted it back into a single family residence.

From 1901 to 1941, it was associated with the Surette family. Thomas Whitney Surette (1862-1941) was a nationally-respected music scholar and educator.

He taught at Harvard Graduate School of Education, wrote for the Atlantic Monthly and, with his wife, Ada, ran the Concord Summer School of Music out of the home from 1915-1916. After a year, it went from 13 students to 38 and was moved to a church.

The school operated in town, with upwards of 150 students per year, until 1938.

The Capt. John Adams house is one of a few brick-ended homes that were built in Concord during this time period, and boasts the town’s most stylish and well-preserved Federal style doorway, according to Concord Historic Commission documents.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 as part of the Monument Square-Lexington Road Historic District.

With six bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms, it has 5,705 square feet and last sold in 2003 for $1.8 million dollars.