– Nov. 2, 1920: Albert O. Brown is elected governor. He gets the largest number of votes in state history (93,273) because it is the first general election in which women voters participate.
– Nov. 2, 1986: Vermonter Barry Stem makes public his plan to develop a world-class golf course, 246 single-family homes and 164 duplex condominiums on 840 acres of Concord’s Broken Ground. It won’t happen.
– Nov. 3, 1947: John G. Winant, former governor and former U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, commits suicide in Concord.
– Nov. 3, 1908: Concord elects Democrat Charles French as its new mayor. At midnight, a cheering crowd carries him through the city streets. Outgoing Mayor Charles Corning, who did not seek re-election, disapproves of his successor. The result will bring about “a veritable misfortune unless French reforms his loud manners & modifies his coarse & nasty speech,” Corning writes in his diary.
– Nov. 4, 1947: Concord voters apparently aren’t in the mood to have fun this Election Day. By wide margins, they reject plans to construct a man-made lake and to permit high school sports and recreational bowling on Sundays.
– Nov. 5, 1996: For the first time ever, Concord elects an all-female delegation to the State House. The members: Reps. Carol Burney, Jean Wallin, Mary Stuart Gile, Gloria Seldin, Liz Hager, Carol Moore, Toni Crosby, Marilyn Fraser, Katherine Rogers, Tara Reardon, Miriam Dunn, Mary Jane Wallner, Betty Hoadley and Sen. Sylvia Larsen. Come 1998, however, Rep. Dave Poulin will break up the old girls club.
– Nov. 6, 1900: Concord Mayor Nat Martin, a local lawyer who made his name closing saloons, is defeated for reelection. He angered voters by trying to have it both ways – busting some backroom bars under the state’s 45-year-old prohibition statute while permitting other “clubs” to serve liquor.
– Nov. 6, 1907: By a count of 2,281-2,034, Concord voters decide to stop licensing saloons and ban them. Manchester, Nashua and Portsmouth vote to continue licensing. Franklin, Laconia and Keene join Concord in prohibiting them. The measures will take effect May 1, 1908.
– Nov. 7, 1874: A new wrought-iron bridge is opened over the Contoocook River in Penacook. The cost is a little more than $17,000.
– Nov. 8, 1844: The local Columbian artillery turns out on Sand Hill in Concord to fire off a salute to the election of James K. Polk and George M. Dallas. As the cannon is being loaded, an explosion badly injures John L. Haynes, an officer in the unit. The explosion blows of Haynes’s left arm and shatters the bones in his right arm.
– Nov. 8, 1983: On his eighth try, longtime city gadfly Bob Schweiker is elected to the Concord School Board. Even he is surprised by the vote. “I really expected to lose,” he says.
