– Aug. 31, 1892 – The statue of antislavery Sen. John P. Hale is completed outside the State House.
– Aug. 31, 1866 – The Rev. Nathaniel Bouton, author of a Concord history a decade earlier, is named state historian. He will holds this position for 11 years, during which he will compile 10 volumes of provincial and state papers for publication.
– September 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.
– September 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. 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. 4, 1980 – Merrimack County legislators vote to build a new jail. The cost: $2.7 million.
September 5, 1987 – The temperature falls to 34 degrees, a record low.
– September 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.
