Dec. 14, 2001: William King, former chairman of the state Republican Party, a state delegate and manager of Merrill Lynch on Main Street, dies at the age of 90.
Dec. 14, 1999: For the first time in more than a decade, the Concord teachers union authorizes its leadership to call for a strike vote if a settlement on a new three-year contract is not reached within the week.
Dec. 14, 1774: A crowd of 400, led by Thomas Pickering, a sea captain, and John Langdon, a merchant, gathers in downtown Portsmouth in response to British strong-arm tactics, including a ban on the importation of guns and powder. The crowd ignores the royal governor’s efforts to disperse it and marches on Fort William and Mary, where the garrison of six British soldiers wisely surrenders. The crowd hauls down the British colors and carries off 100 barrels of gun powder, some of which will be used in the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Dec. 15, 2001: Regularly scheduled Amtrak service from Portland to Boston, with three stops in New Hampshire, begins, marking the return of passenger trains after a 36-year absence.
Dec. 16, 1773: On the day of the Boston Tea Party, Portsmouth holds a town meeting and passes a resolve designed to prevent the landing of any tea.
Dec. 16, 1965: A new state report shows public libraries in New Hampshire spend an average of $2.32 per resident. Concord tops the list at $4.06 per resident. Book readership is also up statewide, to 6.71 books per resident per year.
Dec. 17, 1979: New Hampshire’s multi-million dollar ski industry, already plagued by high fuel prices, is getting nervous about the winter. With just five days until the start of Christmas vacation, only six of the state’s 35 ski areas are open. Not only has there been a shortage of natural snow, but warm weather has hindered artificial snowmaking operations. Ski area operators are praying for a heavy snowfall before Christmas to bail them out of a potential financial disaster, the Associated Press reports.
Dec. 17, 1997: The New Hampshire Supreme Court rules that the state’s method of paying for public schools with local property taxes is unconstitutional.
Dec. 17, 1808: Three years after a state prison is proposed in Concord, the Legislature authorizes a committee of three to accept bids for building one. It will be nearly four years before the prison opens on North States Street at Tremont Street. It will be a three-story, 36-cell structure surrounded by granite walls three feet thick and 14 feet high. The cost: $37,000.
Dec. 18, 1805: Russell Freeman, a former speaker of the New Hampshire House, is murdered while serving in a debtor’s jail in Haverhill. His murderer will be defended by Daniel Webster but eventually hanged.
Dec. 18, 1978: Gov. Mel Thomson, longtime supporter of the Taiwan government, orders state flags lowered to half staff to protest President Carter’s decision to recognize mainland China.
Dec. 19, 1979: At a campaign stop in Concord, Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker says a get-tough policy is needed to protect American embassies and suggests the creation of a special 50,000-member military unit to accomplish that. “As dangerous as the situation is in Iran, the real danger to this country is the growing impression throughout the world that you can push on Uncle Sam and nothing ever happens in return,” he says.
Dec. 19, 1774: The British frigate Scarborough arrives at Portsmouth Harbor, the second of two ships whose presence quells an insurrection. In two raids during the week, dissident colonists have taken light cannons, muskets and gunpowder from Fort William and Mary. The presence of the British ships is credited with keeping the dissidents from returning to seize the fort’s 45 heavy cannons.
Dec. 19, 1895: Schoolteachers Robert Frost and Elinor White marry. They will honeymoon the following summer in Allenstown.
Dec. 19, 1975: The state accepts as a gift the historic John Langdon house in Portsmouth, birthplace of an early New Hampshire governor.
Dec. 19, 1976: Gov. Mel Thomson says President-elect Jimmy Carter’s amnesty plan for Vietnam draft evaders and deserters “would deal a mortal blow to the patriotic spirit of America.” He writes Carter and tells him so.
December 19, 1983 – Sens. Alan Cranston and John Glenn pay their $1,000 each and file to run in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary. Both criticize the perceived front-runner, Walter Mondale. “You can’t promise everything to everybody,” Glenn says. “Pretty soon you have to go to the checkout counter.” Says Cranston: “Mondale is saying he would do everything from A to Z. I will try to do everything from A to B.”
Dec. 20, 2002: After refusing for nearly nine months, Bishop John McCormack agrees to meet with five men who say they were molested by a Massachusetts priest whom McCormack defended even as he sent him for treatment.
Dec. 20, 1979: U.S. Rep. John Anderson, a Republican from Illinois, comes to Concord to officially register for the GOP presidential primary. Ronald Reagan, he tells the Associated Press, “is a long way from being home free in this race.”
Dec. 20, 1979: In Washington, Gloria Steinem holds a press conference to announce Ms. Magazine’s choice of 80 women activists to watch in the 1980s. On the list: Dudley Dudley, a member of the New Hampshire Executive Council.
Dec. 20, 2001: Ellen Mariani of Derry, whose husband died aboard United Airlines Flight 175 on Sept. 11, sues the airline, alleging the company’s negligence led to the terrorist hijacking.
Dec. 20, 2000: Commissioner Leon Kenison announces his retirement from the state Department of Transportation. Kenison, 58, has worked in the department since he was a 23-year-old civil engineer fresh out of the University of New Hampshire.
Dec. 20, 1774 The Portsmouth Volunteers organize, elect officers and resolve to drill twice weekly. Alarmed, royal Gov. John Wentworth writes to Lord Dartmouth that his minions “are arming and exercising Men, as if for immediate War.”
December 20, 1976: As part of a continuing liquor war between New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Gov. Meldrim Thomson releases the names of eight Massachusetts tax agents who had been seen observing Massachusetts residents purchasing liquor in New Hampshire. Since New Hampshire prices are lower, Massachusetts has tried to limit large out-of-state purchases so as not to lose tax revenue. Thomson claims “tax stool pigeons” will continue to be detained and questioned by state police when found loitering around liquor stores.
Dec. 20, 1999: The Franklin School Board votes to ease the district’s dress code for teachers. The rules, adopted one month earlier, originally required male teachers to wear a dress shirt with a tie. The changes allow the teachers to wear a vest or sweater with the dress shirt or a turtleneck under a sweater or sports coat. Female teachers are required to wear skirts, dresses or slacks.
December 20, 1991 – On the deadline to enter the 1992 New Hampshire primary, hundreds of reporters and television crews gather on the State House lawn for the Mario watch. New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, whom many expect to jump into the Democratic race, never shows.
Dec. 20, 1820: The six children of William Follansbee are burned to death along with his house in the west part of Hill.
December 20, 1860 – South Carolina secedes from the Union. “The earth did not quake, the sun shone on, & Nature did not mark the event with any uncommon convulsion,” New Hampshireman Benjamin Brown French writes in his diary.
December 20, 1863 – New Hampshire man Benjamin Brown French attends “the most brilliant” reception in his time as a White House aide to President Lincoln. Congress, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court are all on hand. The guests of honor: a Russian delegation visiting the capital. “The Russian officers were magnificently uniformed,” writes French, “and exceedingly polite and stiff in their manners, as all foreigners appear to be to us free-and-easy ‘Yankees.’ ”
Dec. 21, 2002: Concord boys’ basketball opens their season with a 49-47 win over Pinkerton.
Dec. 21, 1979: In a speech before the Rochester Chamber of Commerce, Sen. Ted Kennedy accuses President Carter of being “absent without leave” in the country’s fight against high energy prices. In Washington, White House press secretary Jody Powell responds: “It seems to me that the senator’s campaign statements are becoming increasingly shrill and irresponsible.”
Dec. 21, 2001: Former Rochester resident Chad Evans is convicted of second-degree murder in the beating death of his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daughter.
Dec. 21, 2000: Northwood zoning officials have given the green light to a proposed Shop ‘n Save supermarket on Route 4, the Monitor reports.
Dec. 21, 1999: Encouraged by a Vermont Supreme Court ruling the day before, gay rights advocates in this state say they will introduce legislation to confer on same-sex couples the same rights as married couples. Other advocates say it would be better to wait for the Vermont legislature to respond to the court ruling before acting.
Dec. 21, 1998: Senate President Junie Blaisdell says the Senate will heartily consider passing a broad-based tax to pay for education, regardless of Gov. Jeanne Shaheen’s veto pledge. “The people that advocated an income tax used to be able to meet in a phone booth,” he says. “But now people are beginning to wake up.”
December 21, 1833 – Benjamin Brown French of Chester, who will serve for many years in Washington, D.C., arrives there for his first job as a clerk in the U.S. House. He writes: “I entered the Capitol today, for the first time, and I viewed it with thoughts and emotions which I cannot express – will it always be the capitol of my happy country? I fear the seeds are already sown whose fruit will be disunion, but God forbid it!”
December 21, 1861 – New Hampshireman Benjamin Brown French, an aide to President Lincoln, introduces callers to the first lady at her reception. “I like Mrs. L. better and better the more I see of her and think she is an admirable woman,” he writes in his diary. “She bears herself, in every particular, like a lady and, say what they may about her, I will defend her.”
Dec. 21, 1998: The Concord City Council orders City Manager Duncan Ballantyne to review the process used to rename 31 city streets after a prolonged furor over the issue. Ultimately, they say, some streets may revert to their old names.
December 21, 1862 – New Hampshireman Benjamin Brown French, an aide to President Lincoln, writes in his diary: “The war! I have no heart to write about either it or the political aspect of affairs. Defeat at Fredericksburg – the Cabinet breaking up – our leading men fighting with each other! Unless something occurs very soon to brighten up affairs, I shall begin to look upon our whole Nation as on its way to destruction.”
