Dec. 22, 1964: Sen. Norris Cotton criticizes the GOP for its complacency. “We Republicans have felt for too long we had New Hampshire in our pockets. It’s been quite a few years since the Republicans in a campaign did any real work.” He says the job has become tougher with an influx of new residents from Massachusetts. “We’re glad to have them, but the large majority of them are fundamentally Democrats.”
Dec. 23, 1865: Home at last eight months after the last shots of the Civil War were fired, the Second New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment parades through the streets of Concord. Gov. Frederick Smyth and other dignitaries toast the regiment. Three days later, the Second will be paid off and discharged, having served longer than any other New Hampshire regiment.
Dec. 23, 2000: Bradlees department store on Fort Eddy Road is about to go out of business, the Monitor reports. The 105-store chain, which struggled through the 1990s, will close all of its locations.
Dec. 24, 1900: The Monitor reports on this year’s building boom. The new structures include the Optima Building and two other business blocks on Main Street, a new library and Dewey School.
Dec. 24, 1975: Gov. Meldrim Thomson Jr. nominates David H. Souter, a seven-year veteran of the attorney general’s office, to be attorney general of New Hampshire. He will replace Warren Rudman. Tom Rath of Concord is nominated as Souter’s deputy.
Dec. 24, 1979: Mississippi Gov. Cliff Finch arrives in Concord and declares, “I will be the next president of the United States.” If he can’t get enough signatures to get his name on the ballot, he says, he’ll run as a write-in.
Dec. 24, 1989: Don’t tell Concord folks winter has just begun: Only a month after the coldest November day of the century, the city faces another deep freeze. The day’s low temperature is 20 below zero.
Dec. 24, 1998: A 26-year-old snowmobiler crashes through the ice of Turkey Pond in Concord and is stuck in the frigid water for an hour — staying afloat by purposely freezing his forearms and hands on top of the ice. The Concord fire battalion chief calls it the most dangerous ice rescue in memory. “There was such shallow ice around him,” he says.
Dec. 25, 1820: Episcopalians hold Concord’s first Christmas celebration 93 years after the town was settled. Because Concord was settled by Massachusetts Congregationalists, the holiday was previously banned.
Dec. 25, 1827: In Concord to preach, Ralph Waldo Emerson meets Ellen Tucker and falls in love with her. She will become his wife. Tucker is 16 years old, lives with her mother and stepfather and wants to be a poet. Here are a few lines from one of her poems:
Sweeter the green sod for my bones
The black earth for my head
The wind, than they cold altered tones
Whence all of love had fled.
Dec. 26, 1776: Col. John Stark’s troops lead the attack on the British and Hessians at Trenton. Capt. Joshua Abbot’s Concord company and Ebenezer Frye’s Pembroke company march with Stark. Frye, “being very corpulent,” tires quickly and tells his men to move ahead “as fast as they please” under Sgt. Ephraim Stevens. The battle lasts 50 minutes. The Patriot victory is a turning point of the Revolution.
Dec. 26, 1856: A fire reduces Concord’s Phenix Hotel to ashes. It will rise again on the same spot.
Dec. 26, 1987: A Monitor poll of city councilors gives Liz Hager the edge in a three-way vote for mayor of Concord. She will eventually defeat Jim MacKay — with the help of candidate Bob Washburn — becoming the city’s first woman mayor.
Dec. 26, 1999: Proclaiming that “the cause of gay rights, like women’s rights, is a just one,” a Monitor editorial predicts: “Eventually, when it has led to its logical conclusion, the wonder will be why it took so long to get there.” A week earlier, the Vermont Supreme Court set off a furor with its ruling that gay and lesbian couples are entitled to the same legal standing as married people.
Dec. 26, 2001: A fire tears through a two-story house on Lyndon Street, leaving three people homeless. No one was injured.
Dec. 26, 2002: The first snowflakes that lined door wreaths and lights Christmas morning were just a harbinger of what was to come, the Monitor reports. By the early afternoon, snow fell in sheets, with up to 20 inches predicted accumulation across the state.
