July 13, 2003: Authorities continue their search for Sarah and Philip Gehring of Concord in the Midwest. The 14- and 11-year-old were last seen with their father, 44-year-old Manuel A. Gehring of Concord, at the Memorial Field fireworks on July 4. FBI agents and local authorities scour highways and open land for the bodies of the two missing children by air and by ground, but do not find them.
July 13, 1860: The grounds of the city’s new cemetery on Blossom Hill are consecrated. The site is a favorite picnic and party spot, but with population having grown from 4,903 in 1840 to 10,896 in 1860, the city is running out of cemetery space. It buys the 30 acres for $4,500.
July 14, 2003: Roger “Bonzy” Thibeault, 41, of 38 River St. in Franklin, escapes from the Franklin District Court at 10 a.m. while the police are arraigning him in connection with one of the area’s biggest heroin busts. After a state police dog and helicopter and other local departments fail to locate Thibeault, the initial search ends by 3 p.m.
July 14, 2001: Gathering on tennis courts in Pittsfield, 525 people wearing Groucho Marx glasses make history – at least as it’s chronicled by the Guinness Book of World Records. The idea for the record grew out of this year’s Old Home Day theme: “Let’s Make ’em Laugh.”
July 14, 1995: Speaking at a fund-raiser at Laconia Airport, former president George Bush tells the crowd he went to Fenway Park the previous night and was pleased to see the Texas Rangers defeat the Red Sox. When the crowd responds with good-natured boos, Bush says: “That’s all right. I don’t care what you think anymore.”
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 15, 2000: Concord’s Bob Mielcarz wins his ninth State Amateur Golf Championship, the most anyone has ever won.
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, 2000: A Massachusetts doctor suspected of murdering his estranged wife is arrested in a Tuftonboro motel. Richard Sharpe, a highly respected dermatologist at Harvard Medical School, is accused of shooting Karen Sharpe at their Wenham, Mass., home.
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, 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 18, 1945: The state liquor commission bans jukeboxes from hotel grills and says women may not work as bartenders.
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, 1694: Two hundred fifty Indians under the command of a French soldier attack white settlements on both sides of the Oyster River in Durham, killing or capturing 100 settlers.
