June 25, 2003: The Penacook Historical Society holds an open house for the Rolfe barn, a 200-year-old building that the group had fought to save for months. The event gives many supporters their first peek at the property.
June 25, 2002: Against the brilliant blue background of Lake Winnipesaukee, Gov. Jeanne Shaheen says that as a U.S. senator she would build on the state’s new clean air laws to set stricter federal standards.
June 25, 1959: State Sen. James Cleveland uses political savvy to defeat Gov. Wesley Powell’s House Bill 348, a power grab intended to make several state departments answerable to the governor and cut the state workforce by hundreds. The Senate is deadlocked 12-12 on the bill, but with one opponent absent, Powell’s forces try to jam it through. Cleveland calls for a brief recess. He and the rest of the opponents disappear, and the sergeant-at-arms can’t find them. Without a quorum, the Senate cannot vote, and the bill dies.
June 25, 1729: The proprietors of Penacook appoint a committee to find and hire a permanent Congregational minister for the settlement. The minister will be paid 100 pounds a year out of the proprietors’ treasury. A year later, the proprietors will hire the Rev. Timothy Walker for the job.
June 25, 1774: The ship Grosvenor anchors in Portsmouth harbor. Twenty-seven chests of Bohea tea are quietly unloaded and stored in a warehouse. When the leaders of a boycott on tea imported from Britain learn of its presence, they will call a town meeting. A committee appointed by townspeople will negotiate the tea’s return to the Grosvenor, which will take it – at the town’s expense – to Halifax.
June 25, 1835: A Mormon remembered only as “Mr. Green” in a city history comes to Concord looking for converts. He finds none despite two days of lectures.
June 25, 1964: State Parks Director Russell Tobey urges the state to get rid of the Cog Railroad and ban autos from the summit of Mount Washington. “It should be a place for people, not cars, huffing trains and dirty, dingy railroad stations,” he says. It’s an argument he will lose.
June 26, 2003: Matt Bonner, who led the Concord High basketball team to three straight state championships before evolving into a star at the University of Florida, realizes a lifelong dream when he’s selected in the NBA Draft. Initially drafted by the Chicago Bulls in the second round, he’s soon traded to the Toronto Raptors.
June 26, 2002: In a vote of 388 to 121, Pembroke residents approve a new $1.4 million library.
June 26, 2001: Summer is well under way, but there’s still school in Gilmanton. Thanks to eight snow cancellations, the district, which had been scheduled to wrap up classes on June 15, finishes up its school year today.
June 26, 1855: The Legislature incorporates St. Paul’s School. The first student body: three boys from Boston.
June 26, 1741: John Langdon is born in Portsmouth. He will be one of the state’s leaders in the American Revolution, serving as a member of the Continental Congress and, after the war, as a delegate to the convention that drafts the U.S. Constitution. He will later be a U.S. senator, leading that chamber in 1789 until the arrival of the first vice president, John Adams.
June 26, 1925: Charles Ramsdell, who ran the Hampton Beach Casino, Canobie Lake Park in Salem and two hotels on the Isles of Shoals, dies. The Granite Monthly magazine calls him “one of the best known hotelmen and amusement men in New England.”
June 26, 1817: After years of missed deadlines by the map-maker, the Legislature approves Philip Carrigain’s map of New Hampshire. It is the first to delineate town boundaries.
June 27, 2000: The New Hampshire House fails to override Gov. Jeanne Shaheen’s veto of a bill calling for the repeal the state’s death penalty. Roughly the same number of representatives who supported the repeal when the House first voted do so again. This time, however, a two-thirds majority is required to overrule the governor, and abolitionists are unable to meet that threshold.
June 27, 1835: The Concord Railroad Corp. obtains a charter for a railroad between Nashua and Concord. The Boston and Maine Railroad also obtains a charter on this date. The Concord corporation will be delayed by the Panic of 1837 and other factors, and the first train will not pull into Concord until September 1842. The B&M will not open its first line in the state until 1849.
June 27, 1862: Colonel Jesse A. Gove, a Weare native, is killed leading the 22nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment at Gaines’s Mill on the Virginia Peninsula. Gove studied law with Franklin Pierce before the war and served as New Hampshire’s deputy secretary of state from 1850 to 1855.
June 27, 1860: A large Democratic crowd marches to the Eagle Hotel, lights bonfires and shoots off fireworks to celebrate news that, at Baltimore, their party has nominated U.S. Sen. Stephen A. Douglas for president.
June 28, 2003: For seven years, 17-year-olds have been adults in the eyes of the criminal justice system, the Monitor reports. Next week, a task force appointed by the Legislature will recommend raising the age back to 18, making 17-year-olds juveniles once again. The change would mean that crimes committed by 17-year-olds would no longer become part of their adult criminal records.
June 28, 2001: The Franklin Opera House, unused for performances in 30 years, reopens for a 40-minute variety show attended by nearly 130 people. The restoration of the theater is ongoing.
June 28, 1775: With royal authority collapsing in New Hampshire, the Provincial Congress moves to prevent anarchy. It instructs each town to form a committee of safety to enforce law and order.
June 28, 1860: Responding to the Democratic celebrations of the previous day, Wide Awake Clubs, wearing black slickers, and Railsplitters, carrying axes, parade through downtown Concord by torch-light in support of Abraham Lincoln. The Concord and Fisherville cornet bands lead the procession.
June 28, 1833: During his eastern tour, President Andrew Jackson stays at the Eagle Coffee House across from the State House in Concord. Since no bed in the hotel is deemed adequate for a president, Mrs. John Estabrook has lent the house her large mahogany model. Slightly ill, Jackson passes up the renowned hotel cuisine, subsisting on bread and milk.
June 28, 1990: Franklin Mayor Brenda Elias tells the Monitor she has declined two invitations to speak to the Franklin Rotary, which doesn’t admit female members. If she goes to a meeting, she says, it will be as a member.
June 28, 1853: James O. Lyford is born. He will become a journalist and politician and write histories of Concord and Canterbury.
June 28, 1861: The Legislature authorizes $1 million in 6 percent bonds to pay the state’s first Civil War expenses. The vote is 169-94. Rep. John L. Tallant of Concord, a Democrat, crosses over to vote with the Republican majority, making the city’s delegation unanimous in support of the bill.
June 28, 1879: Samuel Homes’s barn in Northfield is demolished by a cyclone.
June 29, 2002: In Laconia, two bikers are shot in an episode that police link to motorcycle gang violence. “It appears that it’s part of the ongoing feud between the Hells Angels and rival motorcycle gangs,” says Laconia police Sgt. John MacLennan. The bikers are treated at Lakes Region General Hospital and released.
June 29, 1835: Celia Thaxter is born. She will become a renowned Portsmouth poet.
June 29, 1873: The North Church burns. It will be rebuilt on the same spot – North Main and Chapel streets – and will open for worship less than three years after the fire.
June 29, 1988: The Concord Planning Board approves construction of the Steeplegate Mall on Loudon Road. Downtown merchants, wary of Manchester’s experience, have jitters.
June 29, 1833: Vice President Martin Van Buren, in Concord with the presidential party, dines with Franklin Pierce and others at the home of Zebina Lincoln, part owner of a dry goods establishment and soon to be proprietor of the Eagle Coffee House.
June 29, 1992: The U.S. Supreme Court upholds Roe vs. Wade, the 19-year-old decision legalizing abortion. Though the vote is 5-4, Justice David H. Souter of New Hampshire and two other members of the majority state their opinion in strong terms, writing: “A decision to overrule Roe’s essential holding under the existing circumstances would address error, if error there was, at the cost of both profound and unnecessary damage to the Court’s legitimacy, and to the Nation’s commitment to the rule of law.”
June 30, 1944: More than three weeks after D-Day, dreaded telegrams reach Concord homes bringing news of casualties in the Allied invasion of Europe. They include a paratrooper and an Army lieutenant who are both missing and Lt. Guy Gowen, a 24-year-old infantry patrol leader who had reached Normandy by glider before being killed in action. Gowen had been a two-sport star at Concord High, graduating in 1937 and going on to UNH.