History for week of Feb. 15, 2024
Feb. 15, 2002: The Diocese of Manchester releases the names of 14 priests who have been accused of sexual misconduct with children between 1963 and 1987. Feb. 15, 1911: A bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. John Weeks of Massachusetts, a New Hampshire native, calls for federal purchase of forest lands. The Weeks Act will lead to the designation of the White Mountain National Forest. Feb. 15, 1943: As a war...
This week in Concord history
Feb. 8, 2002: Lindsay and Allyson Lemire, 21-year-old Bow natives, appear on Sally Jessy Raphael’s talk show. The show is a dating game-like episode titled “Love Search. . . For Someone Like Me,” and pairs the women with aspiring actors and Doublemint twins Jermyn and Joseph Daube. Feb. 8, 2001: More than 30 Concord police and state Drug Task Force officers raid an apartment complex in Concord to arrest three men and a woman who the...
Week in history for Jan. 11, 2024
Jan. 11, 2002: Dozens of residents from small towns between Concord and the Seacoast are expected to meet in Barrington with state officials to review options for stopping, or scaling back, what could be the state’s largest water-bottling operation, the Monitor reports. USA Springs, the Pelham based company that hopes to construct a water-bottling plant on 100 acres it owns on the Barrington/Nottingham town line, wants state...
This week in Concord history
Dec. 28, 1863: Henry Plummer Brooks, a Pittsfield boy of 14 years 10 months, enlists in the Third Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry. After fighting in two battles, he will die of illness in North Carolina. A history of the town’s Civil War soldiers will assert that although there were younger drummer boys during the war, Plummer was the youngest by 10 months of any soldier who carried a rifle. Thus the town will claim both...
This week in Concord history
Dec. 7, 2003: Mother Nature dumps 4 inches of snow on the ground, after giving central New Hampshire 12 inches the day before. The endless frozen shower leaves Department of Transportation road crews in a constant state of motion, keeping roads clear for those who ventured out in the storm. Dec. 7, 2002: The Monitor reports that the public will get access to thousands of pages of church personnel records if the Roman Catholic Diocese...
This week in Concord history
Nov. 30, 2003: Speaking at a house party in Bow, presidential candidate Howard Dean says that an independent Palestinian state is the best hope for an Arab-speaking democracy in the Middle East. And only an American president can broker the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord needed to establish such a state, he says. Nov. 30, 2001: Robert Tulloch, a teenager accused of killing two Dartmouth College professors will use an insanity...
This week in Concord history
Nov. 22, 1963: New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s schedule for a three-day campaign visit to New Hampshire is on the front page of the Monitor, but the trip will be canceled because of the lead story of the day: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Nov. 23, 2002: The Holiday Magic Parade, which has marked the beginning of the holiday season in Concord for 51 years, marches up Loudon Road in Concord. The procession includes...
This week in Concord history
Nov. 16, 2001: The Verizon Wireless Arena opens with a sold-out Monarchs hockey game. Nov. 17, 2001: The plan to build a senior center in Concord, one of two state capitals in the country without such a facility, receives a positive response from the planning board, the Monitor reports. Nov. 17, 1965: Opening Day at Concord’s Everett Arena draws thousands of skaters. “They came streaming across the river bridge and down the hill from...
This week in Concord history
Nov. 9, 1904: J. Duane Squires is born in Grand Forks, N.D. Beginning in 1933, he will run the social studies department at Colby Junior College in New London for many years, becoming a prominent New Hampshire historian. Nov. 9, 1869: Josiah L. Pike, slayer of an old couple in Hampton Falls, is hanged – the first person executed in New Hampshire since colonial times. In the days leading up to his death, ministers’ wives...
This week in Concord history
Oct. 26, 2001: Patricia Cloutier of Concord, believed to be a founder of Classy Touch Enterprises, a Penacook prostitution business, turns herself in at police headquarters. According to police, Cloutier founded the business with Amy Sullivan and allegedly ran the business out of Sullivan’s home. Oct 26, 1988: State officials break ground for the $1.8 million Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in Concord. Oct. 27, 1908: A throng fills...
This week in Concord history
Oct. 19, 2003: A Manchester widow is going after big tobacco, the Monitor reports. Julien Longden smoked for 32 years died of lung cancer at the age of 49. Now his widow, Sheila Longden, is asking a Hillsborough County jury to make the Philip Morris tobacco company pay for the pain suffered by her husband and his death. The trial is the first of its kind in New Hampshire. Oct. 20, 2003: Berlin records the national low temperature at...
This week in Concord history
Oct. 12, 2002: It used to be that Concord has an affordable housing shortage, the Monitor reports. Today, it simply has a housing shortage – one that’s hitting every income sector, from minimum wage workers to wealthy executives. Oct. 12, 2000: The Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce refuses to allow Independent Mary Brown to take part in a debate among candidates for governor. “It’s demeaning,” she...
This week in Concord history
Oct. 5, 1963: Roscoe Higgins, a 65-year-old Deerfield farmer, is fined $300 and given a suspended jail sentence for selling hard cider at the Deerfield Fair. Oct. 5, 1817: An earthquake rocks Concord at about 11:40 a.m. It lasts 1-2 minutes. Oct. 5, 1918: Concord’s Board of Health urges the discontinuation of public funerals because of the Spanish Influenza epidemic, which is at its peak. The board strongly suggests that until...
The harvest time
There are times in life that are most important, periods that must be efficiently managed because your very own survival depends upon it. Such was the case with the settlers living here in Concord well over a century ago. The time that I reference is harvest time, a vital period requiring complete focus by every member of the household. When British colonists first traveled up the Merrimack River from the Massachusetts Bay Colony...
This week in Concord history
Sept. 28, 2003: Fall may just be arriving in much of New Hampshire, but in Plymouth, they’re skipping ahead to winter, the Monitor reports. As temperatures hover around 60 degrees this week and the last green leaves cling stubbornly to the trees, Tenney Mountain will launch its winter ski season. The Oct. 1 start could earn Tenney the coveted position as the first ski resort open for the year nationwide. Sept. 28, 2002: With...
This week in Concord history
Sept. 21, 1938: A giant hurricane roars through Concord. One thousand electric poles are downed and Concord Electric’s Sewalls Falls station is flooded. No power can be generated. Eighty percent of the trees in parks, cemeteries and streets are destroyed in what one account describes as “six shrieking hours of wind.” Sept. 22, 2003: Police arrest Jeffrey W. Gelinas, 27, of Barrington, for prowling and loitering....
This week in Concord history
Sept. 14, 1909: The New Hampshire State Sanatorium on the side of Mt. Moosilauke admits its first tuberculosis patient – hopeful of benefiting from the mountain air, as are the thousands of patients who will follow. Known as the Glencliff Sanatorium, the state-run facility will serve its last patient in 1970. It is now the Glencliff Home for the Elderly. Sept. 14, 1992: Outgoing U.S. Sen. Warren Rudman, a Republican from New...
The bell and the clock
The Board of Trade Building is pictured here in 1873. This beautiful building was constructed on the corner of North Main and School Street in downtown Concord. The building was dedicated in 1873 and one of the very first tenants was the Concord YMCA. The Board of Trade Building still lives down on Main Street, some on the west side and some on the east side of the street. You see, the top of the building was removed many years ago,...
This week in Concord history
Sept. 7, 1791: A constitutional convention is called to order in Concord. In 36 days in session, it will propose the creation of the Executive Council, the sizes of the bicameral legislature and a change in the name of the state’s top elected official from “president” to “governor.” Voters will approve these changes in 1792. Sept. 7, 1929: Patrick Griffiths of 10½ Walker St. in Concord pedals to a stop in...
Concord Business District – 1945
The Main Street business district in Concord is pictured in 1945. This photograph had a caption on the back that mentioned the need to relieve the downtown congestion with a bypass. Hence the “Baby Bypass” or Storrs Street was built.
This week in Concord history
Aug. 24, 2002: A dog that roamed Tilton for two weeks since bolting from a highway crash on Interstate 93 is caught and returned to her owner, Randolph Carford, of Norwalk, Conn. Nyshka, a 4-year-old Australian shepherd, is found by Tilton police officer William Patten, Melisssa Dudley of Canterbury and Lorden Butman of Concord in an animal trap set by the police behind Wal-Mart. Dog and owner are reunited at Dartmouth-Hitchcock...
1920: Purington’s Garage
The Arthur Purington Automotive Garage is pictured along the east side of South Main Street. This building once occupied the current site of the large “Smile” Building. Notice the standard gauge trolley tracks in the street and the gas street lanterns that once illuminated our ancestors dark evenings. A vintage gasoline pump is pictured to the right and the graceful elm trees that once lined our Main Street are...
This week in Concord history
Aug. 10, 2000: A Superior Court judge rules the state must return about $1 million in taxes paid on interest and dividends earned from out-of-state banks between 1991 and 1994. Aug. 11, 1766: John Wentworth is appointed governor of new Hampshire by King George II and also “surveyor of the king’s woods in North America.” He will take charge the following summer. Aug. 12, 2002: In Meredith, Marine Patrol is still...
1942 News Wagon
This is a photograph of Paul Denning and his “News Bus” located on State Street near the State House Annex in 1942. Before social media people would actually seek information from newspapers and magazines – I remember the newspapers were always sold after church on Sunday mornings at St. Peters in Concord.
This week in Concord history
Aug. 3, 2003: In Minneapolis, the Episcopal Church’s laity and clergy move the Rev. Canon Gene Robinson, 56, of Weare, a step closer to becoming New Hampshire’s bishop, giving him more votes than expected in a church deeply torn over his homosexuality. He needs 112 votes from the clergy and laity. He gets 128. Aug. 3, 2002: Nan Hagen has had a lifelong love affair with downtowns, the Monitor reports. As the first coordinator of Main...
This week in Concord history
July 27, 2001: Five people are injured when two cars collide on Canobie Lake Park’s most popular roller coaster. State safety officials will find nothing mechanically wrong with the Salem ride, blaming operator error for the crash. July 28, 1927: Nellie Taylor Ross, the nation’s first woman governor, stops at the Concord home of former New Hampshire governor John G. Winant. She is on her way to Tilton, where she will give a Chatauqua...
Looking back: White Park pool
FEarly 1930s: The Swimming Pool at White Park, Concord This is a wonderful image of the “Swimming Pool at White Park” shown here with children enjoying the refreshing water on a summer day many years ago. When Charles Eliot designed White Park in 1888 this “swimming pool” was actually referred to as the “Upper Pond” located where we do have our present day swimming pool. It was a wonderful design by Charles Eliot, spring fed with a...
This week in Concord history
July 20, 1988: The New York Times reports that New Hampshire is among the top 10 states when it comes to wine consumption. At the top of the list: California. No. 50: Mississippi. New Hampshire comes in 9th, at 3.12 gallons per capita per year. July 20, 1817: President James Monroe attends church at “the Old North,” the Congregational church that stood on the site of the current Walker School. July 21, 1861: Col. Gilman Marston of the...
This week in Concord history
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...
This week in Concord history
July 6, 2002: The State House is getting a makeover, the Monitor reports. The white portion of the octagonal structure, just below the gilded part of the dome, will be stripped and restored to the tune of $174,000. July 6, 2001: Joseph Whittey is found guilty of murdering 81-year-old Yvonne Fine in Concord nearly 20 years ago. Although Whittey had been a suspect early on, it wasn’t until last year that investigators discovered DNA...
