Sept. 2, 1856: The Coos Republican reports a freak accident in Whitefield: “Mr. Webster Parker, while at work with a log on the dam at Morris Clark’s Sawmill in Whitefield Village, was carried over and down the apron of the dam with great velocity some 20 feet and then dropping partly through a hole in the apron was there confined about 30 minutes, the water constantly pouring over him. A large crowd collected, and much interest was felt until he was rescued from his perilous condition.”
Sept. 3, 2001: A standoff closes Sewalls Falls Road and re-routes holiday traffic on Interstate 93. After 4½ hours, the police take a man into custody.
Sept. 3, 2003: The attorney general’s office announces that New Hampshire will join at least two other states in suing the Environmental Protection Agency for adopting a revision to the Clean Air Act that will allow the nation’s oldest power plants, refineries and other industrial facilities to upgrade without installing modern pollution controls.
Sept. 4, 1971: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that a two-year study shows New Hampshire winds are so strong that they have shaken the Old Man of the Mountain in Franconia Notch.
Sept. 4, 1775: Dr. Josiah Bartlett leaves his home in Kingston for the Continental Congress. He will arrive 11 days later and, with some breaks, serve for three years.
Sept. 4, 1929: Two men are arrested on slot machine charges at the Bradford Fair a day after a visit from Willoughby Slattery, the county solicitor. The fair is in danger of being closed because of excessive gambling on the midway, a move the Monitor would not oppose. “The Bradford fair this year really isn’t a fair in any way, certainly not an agricultural fair,” the paper says. “There are no exhibits with the exception of a single pumpkin of huge proportions.”
Sept. 5, 2002: In a prime-time televised debate, the three Republican candidates for governor, Craig Benson, Gordon Humphrey and Bruce Keough, hit all the themes their expensive, vigorous and often vicious campaign broached throughout the summer.
Sept. 5, 1905: The Russian-Japanese peace treaty is signed at Portsmouth.
Sept. 6, 2000: Concord civic and business leaders tour the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel at Horseshoe Pond. The $10 million hotel and conference center “has been a gleam in so many eyes,” Concord Mayor Bill Veroneau says. “There’s no question this is going to be the highlight facility of the city.”
Sept. 6, 1842: The locomotive Amoskeag with a train of three passenger cars arrives in Concord at 6:45 p.m. The train, from Boston, is the first to come to the city’s new depot. “As the cars came in, the multitude raised cheering shout, and the cannon pealed forth its thunder to celebrate,” Bouton’s history will report. Many of the onlookers were taken for a joy-ride, to Bow.
Sept. 6, 1929: Pittsfield Police Chief Burt Avery closes nine concessions on the midway at the Pittsfield Agricultural Fair. The presence of “money making machines and percentage wheels” leads the chief to suspect gambling is rampant at the fair.
Sept. 7, 2003: Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry may have four months to go before the New Hampshire primary, but he knows what he would do with Iraq if he was sitting in the Oval Office tomorrow, the Monitor reports. “I’d immediately sit down with Kofi Annan, Kerry says, adding he would win back miffed European allies with a “high degree of diplomacy and lack of pride.”
Sept. 7, 2002: Bishop Brady’s Green Giants win their season-opening game against Newport, 42-7. The game marks the debut of new coach Ed DePriest.
Sept. 7, 1929: Patrick Griffiths of 10½ Walker St. in Concord pedals to a stop in the State House plaza at 12:03 a.m. with a new endurance record for continuous bicycling. His time of 65 hours, 33 minutes breaks the record by 33 minutes. Motorists surrounding the State House plaza honk their horns in tribute to the new mark.
Sept. 8, 1774: At Portsmouth, an angry mob stones the house of Edward Parry, the tea agent, after learning that, in violation of their boycott, he has allowed the unloading of 30 chests of tea from the mast ship Fox.
