Sept. 10, 2001: A Barnstead police officer who had been suspended without pay is arrested for allegedly destroying paperwork after arresting a drunken driver. The officer a charged with tampering with public records, a misdemeanor.
Sept. 10, 2000: NBC’s The West Wing wins a record-tying eight Emmy Awards, putting the show about a president from New Hampshire in the elite company of ER and Hill Street Blues – the only other series to win so many awards in their first season.
Sept. 10, 1861: Fire destroys the railroad storage barns and many cars of the Concord and Northern railroads.
Sept. 10, 1858: In Lancaster, Benjamin Brown French visits the State Industrial School for wayward children. Its proprietor introduces him to a 15-year-old girl who came there two years ago as “a dirty swearing slut. All the language she knew was oaths, & she was covered with filth. Now she is a handsome, black-haired damsel, uses good language, & can cut and fit a dress as well as any dressmaker.” The proprietor, the Rev. Bradford Pierce, tells French: “That girl is saved!”
Sept. 11, 2003: The Kearsarge Regional School board unanimously approves the design and cost for a new middle school. The price tag: $19.7 million.
Sept. 11, 2002: Hundreds of people stand silent under umbrellas at the State House Plaza during a Sept. 11 commemoration ceremony.
Sept. 11, 2001: In cities and towns, schools and offices, people across the state break from their routines as the grim details of terrorist attacks along the East Coast unfold. Many simply break down.
Sept. 11, 1866: Kearsarge beats Portsmouth 32-19 in one of the first reported games of “base ball” in Concord. Judge Ira Eastman, however, remembers seeing the game (or its forerunner, rounders) played in the city 50 years before.
Sept. 11, 1984: Howard Wilson of Andover, a New Hampshire House candidate who advocates abolishing governing and selling lakes and roads to private companies, loses in the GOP primary. Asked whether he thought he had a chance, he replies: “Yeah, if both of the other candidates dropped dead before the election.”
Sept. 12, 2003: The state Department of Education releases the results of last spring’s state tests for third-, sixth- and 10th-graders. Statewide, last year’s third-graders achieve about the same levels of proficiency in math and language arts as the year before, while sixth-graders did better all around. Tenth-graders got higher scores in math and science but went down in English and social studies.
Sept. 12, 2002: Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen speaks to about 100 Democratic activists and elected officials. She rallies supporters to her U.S. Senate cause, and tries to enlist disgruntled followers of defeated U.S. Sen. Bob Smith as well.
Sept. 12, 2001: People across the state search for ways to respond to the terrorist attacks along the East Coast. Hundreds of people give blood, some enlist in the military, others stock up on ammo.
Sept. 12, 1765: In protest of the Stamp Act, effigies of George Meserve, the royal stamp agent, and Lord Bute, head of the British ministry, are hanged in Portsmouth’s Haymarket Square. In the evening, they are taken down and paraded to the town’s Liberty Pole, where they are burned.
Sept. 12, 1792: In Tamworth, the Rev. Samuel Hidden is ordained on a large, flat-topped boulder south of Mount Chocorua. He will lead the town for 46 years. An obelisk on the boulder, now known as Ordination Rock, marks the spot.
Sept. 12, 1979: The Washington Post reports that William Dunfey, a leading New Hampshire businessman-politician, is about to be named to the U.S. delegation to the UN General Assembly. He will be the third Dunfey brother to receive recognition by President Carter through a prestigious federal job.
Sept. 12, 1841: In an unscheduled lecturer, Stephen S. Foster, a Canterbury abolitionist, holds forth during a meeting at the Old North Church. When he won’t stop talking, several men escort him out.
Sept. 12, 1977: National Democratic activists meeting in Detroit seek to end the prominence of New Hampshire as the state that holds the first presidential primary. Their failed effort won’t be the last.
Sept. 12, 1765: Now calling themselves the Sons of Liberty, Portsmouth protesters of new taxes imposed by the crown march through the streets and hang in effigy George Meserve, who has been announced as the royal Stamp Act agent for New Hampshire. It turns out Meserve has already resigned from the job.
Sept. 13, 2003: At New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon, Jimmie Johnson and Ryan Newman post the two best times in each of the day’s practice sessions for the Sylvania 300. The following day, Johnson will capture his second victory at NHIS this season.
Sept. 13, 2002: On the last day of the two-week filing period for the Concord school board, a mini-flood of filings produces seven newcomers and two incumbents who will vie for four seats on the board.
Sept. 13, 2001: The New Hampshire 300, the NASCAR race which draws one of the largest one-day sporting crowds in New England, is postponed in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Sept. 13, 2000: Winston Cup driver Tony Stewart doesn’t hide his displeasure with NASCAR for deciding that restrictor plates will be required for this weekend’s races at New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon. “It’s going to make me less comfortable as a driver because now I have to drive in harder into the corners than I had to go in before,” Stewart says. “I’m going to have less time to react if the throttle does stick. It just puts us in a bad spot.”
Sept. 13, 1913: Harry K. Thaw, a wealthy, prominent New Yorker who murdered one of the country’s foremost architects, Stanford White, arrives in Concord. Thaw was convicted, escaped from prison and was recaptured in Canada. He was brought back across the border and is being held under house arrest at the Eagle Hotel on Main Street. His case will be tangled up in court until December 1914. In the meantime, he will pass the summer of 1914 at a resort in Gorham.
Sept. 13, 1976: Rochester Mayor John Shaw says he will pay a parking ticket given to Gov. Mel Thomson after a local businessman complained the governor’s limousine was illegally parked. Cost of the ticket: 50 cents.
Sept. 13, 1990: A crowd of New Hampshire dignitaries attends the first day of questioning of David Souter by the U.S. Senate judiciary committee. “All I can say is: He’s the brightest guy I know and I trust him and I’m pro-choice,” Concord state Sen. Susan McLane assures liberal activists. U.S. Sen. Warren Rudman tells his colleagues: “David Souter is my friend. I trust him and I respect him. I like him. He has made me think. He has made reflect. He has made me laugh.”
Sept. 13, 1981: William Loeb, publisher of the Union Leader since 1946, dies of cancer at 75. The paper will remain conservative, Managing Editor Joseph McQuaid predicts, but “it’ll never be the same because there was only one William Loeb.”
Sept. 14, 2002: Tracy Gordon wins the Busch North Series race at NHIS in Loudon.
Sept. 14, 2000: Kingswood Regional High School students perform a “No No Fashion Show,” illustrating to parents what will be considered acceptable clothing this year and what won’t. A new dress code bans baggy pants, short skirts and tank tops.
Sept. 14, 1971: Jaffrey District Court Judge Bernard Hampsey sentences two youths to 10 days in jail to set up a test case on his requirement that defendants wear a tie and suit jacket in court. The sentence is immediately suspended to allow an appeal.
Sept. 14, 1909: The New Hampshire State Sanatorium on the side of Mt. Moosilauke admits its first tuberculosis patient – hopeful of benefiting from the mountain air, as are the thousands of patients who will follow. Known as the Glencliff Sanatorium, the state-run facility will serve its last patient in 1970. It is now the Glencliff Home for the Elderly.
Sept. 14, 1858: The selectmen of Jefferson warn residents in a newspaper advertisement of a poor woman in search of a handout: “This is give notice that Melissa Ingerson, one of the town’s poor in Jefferson, having left the place provided for her by said town, all persons are forbid harboring or trusting her, as said town will pay no bills of her contracting.”
Sept. 14, 1972: On Main Street in Concord, Edward Nixon, the president’s younger brother, opens the state headquarters of the Committee for the Re-election of the President. The Monitor’s reporter notices only a vague resemblance between the taller, thinner Edward and his famous brother. “Only the nose,” Edward Nixon agrees.
Sept. 15, 2003: The Concord City Council approves adding several traffic-calming devices to Broadway, in the area near Rollins Park. Those devices include medians, a traffic island and curb protrusions – also known as bump-outs – that councilors hope will force drivers to slow down.
Sept. 15, 2002: Ryan Newman wins the rain-shortened New Hampshire 300 at the New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon.
Sept. 15, 2001: New Hampshire 4,500 military reservists prepare to be called to active duty for homeland defense and recovery missions, the Monitor reports.
Sept. 15, 1860: Concord celebrates the opening of Auburn Street. Several hundred residents join in a carriage procession, led by the Concord Cornet Band, from the Eagle hotel, up Centre Street to Auburn. Two large flags suspended across the new street draw hearty salutes. The march continues to Little Pond Road. One speaker says the new road suggests indications of our progress in civilization.
Sept. 15, 1979: At George Washington University in Washington, D.C., college students are drilled in nonviolent protest, practicing for demonstrations planned next month at the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. “We have to prepare for every contingency,” Win Morgan, the leader, tells them. “Guns, dogs, gas.”
Sept. 15, 1900: A train wreck near Weirs Beach demolishes two locomotives and kills two men.
Sept. 15, 1860: Mayor Simon Willard and the Concord Cornet Band lead a carriage procession of several hundred people up the newly opened Auburn Street. An evangelistic preacher and promoter named John G. Hook has laid out 11 streets with house lots in the woods of the city’s West End.
