This Week In Concord History

April 21, 1861: Capt. Edward E. Sturtevant, Concord’s night constable and now the state’s first volunteer for service in the Union army, marches a squad of volunteers into South Congregational Church for Sunday services.

April 21, 1881: At 6 p.m., a small closed car drawn by a horse leaves Abbot & Downing shops for Fosterville. The ride ushers in the era of trolleys in Concord. The cars, made by Abbot & Downing, will carry 200,000 people in their first year of operation.

April 21, 1975: Gov. Mel Thomson calls for an amendment to the state constitution to guarantee the right to have voluntary prayers in public school.

April 22, 2001: In informal interviews around Concord, voters say they were anything but shocked by the Legislature’s recent failure to pass any of four competing school tax plans. “I was dismayed,” says Linda Chadbourne, “but not surprised.”

April 22, 1861: Meeting at the South Congregational Church, a group of Concord women organizes an effort to supply soldiers with “articles necessary to their comfort in the field.” They have raised $200 and resolve to spend $150 on flannel for shirts for the First New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

April 22, 1994: Richard Nixon dies at 81. His New Hampshire friends remember him fondly. Former governor Meldrim Thomson, who supported Nixon almost to the day of his resignation, recalls introducing his son and chief of staff Peter to the president 20 years before. “Mel,” Nixon told him, “you are smart to have your son watch your back.”

April 22, 1864: The Sanborn block, home to the offices of the New Hampshire Patriot, is destroyed by fire.

April 23, 2002: The Senate passes a bill under which insurance companies would be forced to cover the costs of treating anorexia, bulimia, post-traumatic stress disorder and drug and alcohol abuse. The bill, which passes 21-2, will help create a more stable workforce and acknowledge that mental health is as important as physical health, according to Democratic Sen. Katie Wheeler of Durham.

April 23, 1945: Thirteen-year-old Larry West of Concord is killed with a 12-gauge shotgun. The weapon discharges accidentally while he is climbing a tree to shoot a porcupine.

April 23, 1843: Convinced that the end of the world is near, a considerable number of people in Concord and elsewhere neglect all worldly business and give themselves up to prayer. A few become insane, some destitute.

April 24, 2002: Gov. Jeanne Shaheen disputes allegations that her political ties with Providian Financial Corp. helped the company duck consumer protection authorities and won her daughter a job running a nonprofit organization bankrolled by the company, the Monitor reports.

April 24, 2001: Having failed to pass four school funding plans, lawmakers toss around a wide range of ideas, including a tax on all electricity use, a tax on credit card purchases, and a “head” tax on every adult state resident.

April 24, 1992: The Concord Monitor publishes its last afternoon edition. Henceforth it will be a morning paper.

April 24, 2000: Supporters of state Supreme Court nominee Linda Dalianis make their case to the Executive Council: At a time when the court is wracked with allegations of misconduct, they say, the state couldn’t ask for a more humble, prudent and ethically minded addition to the besieged panel.

April 24, 1853: Miffed that Franklin Pierce, now president, has relegated him to a lowly clerical job, Benjamin Brown French reminisces in his journal about their friendship. In 1831, on the way to serve in the New Hampshire House, the two met in Hopkinton, Pierce on horseback, French in a chaise. In Concord, “we took rooms at Gass’s Eagle Hotel, nearly opposite each other, & then commenced a friendship that has been, on my part, almost an affection. From that day to this I have not wronged Frank Pierce in thought, word or deed.”

April 24, 1900: Harriet P. Dame dies in Concord at the age of 85. She was renowned for having ventured south with the 2nd New Hampshire Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. She served as a nurse and helpmate to the soldiers and was captured at Bull Run.

April 25, 2002: The Concord Fire Department’s new ladder truck, which caused hullabaloo among city councilors, fire administrators, fire union members and mayoral candidates last summer and fall, has arrived, the Monitor reports. The $688,000 truck is called a “tower ladder” because there’s a platform, or bucket, at the top capable of holding up to three people.

April 25, 1996: A packed house comes to the City Auditorium to hear five poets read in honor of Jane Kenyon, who was New Hampshire’s poet laureate when she died a year earlier. Among the readers are two Pulitzer Prize winners – Maxine Kumin and Charles Simic – and Kenyon’s widower, Donald Hall.

April 25, 1975: President Ford visits the state and is greeted at Concord airport and introduced to the Legislature by Gov. Meldrim Thomson. Thomson, however, has let it be known that he’s promoting a challenge to Ford in the presidential primary from former California governor Ronald Reagan – and, failing that, Thomson plans to run himself.

April 26, 2001: Bancroft Products, a Concord nonprofit known for hiring refugees and people with disabilities, has laid off 260 employees, the Monitor reports. Just six months ago, when the economic outlook was rosier, the company had been planning to add some 130 jobs.

April 26, 1948: On the first day of spring vacation, Concord students take to the streets of downtown brandishing placards. Their cause: a new swimming pool in West Concord. The state Board of Health closed the old one as unsanitary in 1945, and a committee of the city’s alderman has recommended against spending $110,000 to build a new one.

April 27, 2003: At the Concord Community Music School, Dana Gioia, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, tells art leaders from across the state that he is ready to rebuild and revitalize the endowment. “The arts are one of the primary and primal ways of knowing the world,” he said. “They tend to embrace and enhance. . . not only building your humanity but building your empathy.”

Author: Insider staff

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