April 5, 1881: Fire badly damages the works of the Page Belting Co. in Concord. The loss is estimated at $24,000.
April 5, 2002: Charles Gravenhorst, a self-described pastor who hosts a late-night Christian show on Concord Community TV, is arrested on charges related to an alleged sexual assault in Maine.
April 6, 1853: City government is established in Concord.
April 6, 1993: For the first time, Concord’s Bob Tewksbury gets an Opening Day start, pitching for St. Louis at San Francisco. He loses but will soon be on track to a 17-win season.
April 7, 1830: A committee is formed in Concord to pursue the idea of an east-west railroad line through New Hampshire and Vermont. The first train will not reach the city for 12 years, and it will come north from Boston.
April 7, 1945: The Monitor reports on Page 1: “Masculine aggressiveness, which took a set-back last year when a girl grabbed the highly prized No. 1 city bicycle registration, came back strong this year to capture the first six plates issued by the police department this morning.” Nos. 1, 2 and 3 will get their picture on Page 1 the next afternoon.
April 7, 2000: Robert Blair, who murdered his wife and her young son in a Concord motel in 1996, has told the police he also killed two people in Rutland, Vt., in 1983, the Rutland Herald reports. Detectives there, however, will find no evidence of the killings in the location Blair described.
April 8, 1939: From the “More Things Change Department”: A Monitor headline announces “Two-Monikered Streets Cause Befuddlement.” The reporter, describing plans to rename dozens of city streets, notes calmly: “There’s no hurry about this proposition, of course. Most of the streets have gone by their names for many years and couple more won’t hurt.”
April 9, 1991: After two consecutive days when the temperature reached 85 degrees, Concord settles for a high of 77. It’s apparently a big year for hot streaks: The city enjoyed another historic heat wave at the beginning of February.
April 10, 1829: While addressing a Merrimack County jury in Concord, the spellbinding lawyer Ezekiel Webster, brother of Daniel, drops dead. “He had spoken nearly a half hour, in full and unaltering voice, when the hand of death arrested his earthly course,” writes Judge Charles Corning.
April 10, 1865: A huge celebration in Concord marks the end of the Civil War. Mayor Moses Humphrey orders the city’s fire engines decorated and ready to move to the State House by 4:30 p.m. Bands play, cannons boom, church bells peal. After nightfall, there is a “general illumination” of the city and a 400-gun salute is fired.
April 10, 1991: The Concord planning board rejects a plan by developer Barry Stem to build a hotel and conference center on Broken Ground. It is just one segment of his development project, which also includes an 18-hole golf course and nearly 500 luxury homes. None of it will ever be built.
April 11, 1793: A tragedy called The Revenge plays at the Town House, on the current site of the Merrimack County Courthouse. It is the first play to be staged in Concord. The city’s Mirrour calling it “a virtuous, sentimental and rational amusement to the respectable inhabitants of the town.”
April 11, 1974: Gov. Mel Thomson warns state college students not to streak. “Running naked through public buildings and on the streets is an affront to most of our citizens. It is an exercise in depravity. If tolerated, it can only lead to the eventual loss of whatever sense of morality still exists in America.”
April 11, 1984: Fire ravages the 125-year-old St. Paul’s church in Concord, leaving only the walls, bell tower and half the roof intact. Firefighters have to smash a century-old stained glass window to ventilate the building and the floor beneath the altar collapses.
April 11, 1986: Chosen by the New York Yankees five years earlier as a 19th-round draft pick, Bob Tewksbury of Concord makes his first Major League start at Yankee Stadium. He defeats the Milwaukee Brewers, 3-2.
April 11, 1997: Michael Dorris, 52, well-known author and teacher who founded the Native American studies department at Dartmouth, kills himself in a Concord motel.
April 11, 2003: The New Hampshire Supreme Court upholds a 2001 Concord Planning Board decision that told the Richmond Co. it couldn’t build a shopping center in the old railroad yards near the South End marsh. The decision rewards the South End residents who have spent nearly three years fighting the project and reinforces the authority of planning boards.
