July 14, 1850: On a journey into the White Mountains seeking scenes to paint, New Hampshire artist Benjamin Champney writes to a friend in Fryeburg, Maine: “To our great surprise we saw a broad and beautiful valley bounded by lofty hills and the Saco winding through it with a thousand turns and luxuriant trees interspersed. In fact we found the beau ideal of a certain kind of scenery – a combination of the wild and cultivated, the bold and graceful.”
July 14, 1748: French and Indians numbering 100 attack Sergeant Thomas Taylor and his party of 16 men in Hinsdale. Four of Taylor’s party are killed, and he and eight others are taken captured.
July 15, 1863: Aware that draft riots have occurred in New York and Boston, the city of Concord appropriates $1,460 to buy 100 revolvers and ammunition for self-defense. It also authorizes Mayor Benjamin F. Gale to appoint 100 special police officers. No draft riots will occur in Concord.
July 15, 1970: Addressing Gov. Walter Peterson, who is seeking reelection, Manchester publisher William Loeb writes on his front page that the real issue in 1970 is “whether you and other scheming politicians will control the state . . . for the benefit of yourself and your pals.”
July 15, 1605: Samuel de Champlain, a French explorer, sails into Piscataqua Bay.
July 15, 1832: Six convicts escape from the state prison in Concord by splitting a stone in the roofing of their cell and letting themselves down the wall by their blankets. Four are captured in Hopkinton, one in Grantham. One is never found.
July 16, 1821: Mary Baker Eddy is born in Bow. In February 1866, she will write of healing herself from what a doctor diagnosed as a fatal fall on the ice. Out of this experience is born Christian Science. Eddy will found the Church of Christ, Scientist, in 1879.
July 16, 1864: A year after the Legislature announced that “any city or town” might bid to build a new State House, legislators vote to keep Concord as state capital. The price: The city must build a street on the south side of State House grounds (Capitol Street) and rebuild the cramped 44-year-old State House. It will do so by the following year at a staggering cost of $347,000, including $189,000 interest.
July 16, 1825: Sarah Hale Boardman, the eldest of 13 children from an Alstead family, sails for Burma with her missionary husband. Over the next two decades she will help translate the Bible, then translate “Pilgrim’s Progress” on her own, into Burmese. Remarried after her husband’s death, Sarah Hale Boardman Judson will die on the way home from Burma on the island of St. Helena.
July 16, 1863: Shots are fired and several men wounded in the third and final day of draft riots in Portsmouth. Fear of riots in Concord and elsewhere leads to the return of two New Hampshire infantry regiments from the field to keep the peace.
July 17, 1988: New Hampshire’s former epidemiologist charges he was fired because he uncovered serious public health problems that Gov. John Sununu did not want publicized. In a report, the epidemiologist says 250 New Hampshire workers die from occupation-related diseases each year, 50 infants die for lack of prenatal and outreach services and about 50 people die for lack of basic medical care.
July 17, 1777: With the British threatening to the west, the Legislature meets in emergency session in Exeter to raise an army. Speaker John Langdon puts up $1,000 in hard money and his personal property to help finance it. The politicians call upon Col. John Stark to lead the force, naming him brigadier general of the state militia.
July 17, 1967: A four-member investigating committee of Concord’s Board of Alderman charges Mayor J. Herbert Quinn with gross misconduct and recommends his removal from office. The committee finds that Quinn attempted to trap Monitor Editor James M. Langley on a drunken driving charge.
July 17, 1945: A house on Pembroke Hill built in 1771 by David Abbott burns to the ground with all its outbuildings. It is the worst fire in Pembroke in many years. The bark of a dog at 3 a.m. saves the occupants, the Spofford family.
July 18, 1945: The state liquor commission bans jukeboxes from hotel grills and says women may not work as bartenders.
July 18, 1945: In an effort to stop petty thievery on his Stone Porch Lodge poultry farm in Boscawen, Walter Marshall says he and all available men will sleep in tents with guns. Marshall promises they will use their weapons if necessary. He also wants to bring in a pack of dogs, “all good barkers.” Marshall tells a reporter he counts his flock of 8,000 chickens every morning, and this morning 10 were missing.
July 18, 1817: To a group of leading citizens on the Concord-Chichester line, a cloud of dust announces the approach of President James Monroe. A cheering crowd on Main Street greets Monroe, a lanky 59-year-old man in a formal long dark coat. He will spend three days in the capital, attending dinners, a concert and Sunday services, taking a ride on a new 75-foot boat on the Merrimack and visiting the State House construction site.
July 18, 1818: A gilded, carved wooden eagle is raised to a perch of the State House, which is nearing completion. The event is marked with a parade, toasts and refreshments.
July 19, 1970: Hart’s Location becomes the last community in New Hampshire to get electricity.
