Sept. 1, 1782: The Rev. Timothy Walker, who has served as Concord’s Puritan minister from around the time of its settlement in 1730, collapses while preparing for a service and dies. He is 77 years old.
Sept. 1, 1939: Germany attacks Poland. The Concord Monitor’s lead editorial says: “We feel certain that try as hard as we may, we cannot stay out of the war if it is at all prolonged.”
Sept. 2, 1947: Plans to install the city’s first parking meters downtown draw the ire of Concord residents. “I will make one pledge. I never will put 10 cents into a meter in order to shop. I will park my car over on Concord Plains and walk in first,” writes Charles H. Nixon in a letter to the editor.
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, 1914: Richard F. Upton is born in Bow. He will become a prominent Concord lawyer and speaker of the New Hampshire House. In 1949, concerned with light voter turnout in previous New Hampshire presidential primaries, he will initiate legislation to make the process more meaningful. Long before his death in 1996, he will be known as the father of the state’s first-in-the-nation primary.
Sept. 3, 1929: At a house on the DW Highway in South Hooksett, federal and state officials seize what they describe as “one of the largest and most complete liquor distilleries ever operated in this state.” The haul includes a 100-gallon copper still, 600 gallons of barley and sugar mash and almost 20 gallons of newly made moonshine.
Sept. 3, 1861: Thirty-one train cars carry the Third New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment out of the Concord station.
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, 1980: Merrimack County legislators vote to build a new jail. The cost: $2.7 million.
Sept. 4, 1987: Kitty Dukakis campaigns in Keene on behalf of her husband Michael’s presidential campaign.
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. 5, 1987: The temperature falls to 34 degrees, a record low.
Sept. 5, 1865: Amy Marcy Cheney Beach is born in Henniker. She will grow up to be a prominent composer and pianist, playing concerts in the United States and Europe.
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. 6, 1935: In Pittsfield, where Gov. John Winant has invited her to speak, Agnes Ryan begins a two-month tour of New Hampshire preaching for the “new, sane patriotism” of pacifism and isolationism.
