Aug. 2, 1830: The Rev. Roger C. Hatch rides from Hopkinton to Concord to make the first deposit in the New Hampshire Savings Bank. The amount is $100. The bank’s quarters at 214 N. Main St. are now the offices of the Gallagher, Callahan and Gartrell law firm.
Aug. 2, 1927: Granite cutters from Concord join others from throughout New England in appealing for a five-day week with a $9-a-day wage. They currently work 5½ days a week at $8 per day.
Aug. 3, 1813: A 20-year-old man from Lexington, Mass., who has rented a room on Concord’s Chapel Street for the past three months announces in the Patriot that he has commenced a wheelwright business. His name is Lewis Downing, and in time his business, Abbot & Downing, will build the coaches that bring Concord national fame.
Aug. 3, 1967: To the shouts and jeers of Mayor J. Herbert Quinn’s supporters, Concord’s Board of Alderman votes 13-1 to impeach the mayor. Quinn’s main offense: an attempt to engineer the arrest of Monitor Editor James M. Langley on a drunken driving charge. Quinn will appeal his dismissal in the courts, but ultimately his ouster will stand and Concord will revert to a weak-mayor, council-manager form of government.
Aug. 3, 2002: Nan Hagen has had a lifelong love affair with downtowns, the Monitor reports. As the first coordinator of Main Street Concord, Inc., she’ll bring that love – and 11 years of experience rehabbing community business districts – into Concord’s downtown.
Aug. 4, 1862: Gen. Oliver O. Howard of Maine and Col. Edward E. Cross of Lancaster, both wounded at the recent Battle of Fair Oaks, are among the speakers at a war recruiting meeting in Concord. The Patriot will report that the speeches were “able and eloquent” with the exception of Howard’s approving mention of “negro projects,” a reference to the plan to allow black men to serve in the Union Army.
Aug. 4, 1965: Concord begins celebrating its bicentennial with neighborhood fairs, a bicentennial queen pageant, badminton, water polo and tugs of war.
Aug. 5, 2000: The Concord National Little League All-Stars travel to Lewes, Del., for the Eastern Regional Softball Tournament. The first game is a tough one, and Concord falls, 6-3.
Aug. 5, 2002: The Quarry Dogs season ends with a 7-5 loss to the Mill City All-Americans.
Aug. 6, 2000: About 20 people gather along the Merrimack River near Concord’s Loudon Road to pray for a world without a nuclear threat. Marking the 55th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the peace activists toss flowers into the water.
Aug. 6, 2001: After spending 10 years at the head of the city council’s table, Mayor Bill Veroneau decides not to run again. Veroneau, 71, announces his decision to councilors at a neighborhood forum in Penacook.
Aug. 7, 2001: The Concord Baseball Association announces that Pete Dupuis has been named the general manager of the Concord Quarry Dogs for the 2002 season. Dupuis was the assistant general manager under Warren Doane, who passed away earlier this year.
Aug. 8, 1861: The Democratic Standard, a Concord newspaper with Southern sympathies, refers to the Union Army as “Old Abe’s Mob.” When angry returned soldiers from the First New Hampshire Volunteers gather outside the Standard office, the paper’s frightened proprietors stand in the windows, pistols in hand. The owners fire three shots in the melee that follows, but no one is injured. The mob burns some of the Standard’s property and dumps its type cases in the street.
Aug. 8, 1974: As news of the impending resignation of President Nixon sweeps the nation, the Monitor interviews people in the streets of Concord. “I feel a tremendous sense of renewal for the American system,” St. Paul’s School English teacher Richard Lederer tells a reporter. The president announces his resignation in a televised speech, and Vice President Gerald Ford assumes the presidency.
Aug. 8, 2001: The police believe an early morning robbery of the Main Street Cumberland Farms may be connected to recent holdups in Manchester, Bedford and Hooksett, investigators say. “We’re thinking that these may be related,” Manchester Police Sgt. Hames Kinney says. “There are similarities.”
