Aug. 28, 2000: The board of directors of First Night New Hampshire announces it won't hold its annual New Year's Eve celebration this year. The organization has accumulated debts over the past three years, in part due to cold weather and a 1999 bomb scare.
Aug. 29, 1862: While ministering to soldiers of the 2nd New Hampshire Infantry at Second Bull Run, Harriet P. Dame of Concord is captured. She is taken to Stonewall Jackson's headquarters and will be released the next day. As long as the 2nd serves, Dame will be its “angel of mercy,” according to Maj. J.D. Cooper. “Many days,” he will write, “she has stood by the side of our noble, patriotic sons who have gone to their long homes, doing all in her power to alleviate their sufferings, and soothe their sorrows in the dying hour.”
Aug. 29, 1900: Workmen erecting electric light poles find two rusted tin boxes buried by a dirt road in Bow. The boxes contain documents stolen from the State House more than five years earlier in a heist that netted $6,000 in cash.
Aug. 30, 1790: A town meeting approves spending 100 pounds to build a “town house” on land near Main and Court streets. The town house will be a meeting place for townspeople and the General Court.
Aug. 30, 1824: Amos Parker, editor of Concord's weekly Statesman, goes to Boston to invite the Marquis de Lafayette to visit Concord during the Revolutionary War hero's U.S. tour. Lafayette agrees to come after the dedication of the Bunker Hill Memorial the following June. Parker describes Lafayette as “a dignified personage, in his 60s, grown portly,” wearing buff-colored cotton pants, a swans'-down vest, a blue broadcloth coat with gilt buttons, a beaver top hat and plain shoes.
Aug. 30, 1970: At the Highway Hotel in Concord, the Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge, Pa., honors 10 New Hampshire people for efforts to maintain “the American way.” Among the honorees are Publisher William Loeb and gubernatorial candidate Meldrim Thomson Jr.
Aug. 30, 1981: Ray Barham, future Monitor prison columnist, guns down Norman Walpole in Wolfeboro.
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.
Aug. 31, 1892: The statue of antislavery Sen. John P. Hale is completed outside the State House.
Aug. 31, 2000: Author Russell Banks visits with inmates at New Hampshire State Prison. “In many ways,” he tells them, “you guys are my ideal readers.”
Sept. 1, 1964: The U.S. Census Bureau announces that New Hampshire has retained its national ranking in estimated population figures. With a population of 654,000, the state comes in 46th. Vermont is the only New England state with fewer people.
Sept. 1, 2002: The Monitor reports that both the Republican and Democratic gubernatorial primary races are too close to call, according to a poll conducted for the newspaper.
A survey of 300 likely GOP primary voters showed Cabletron co-founder Craig Benson leading former U.S. senator Gordon Humphrey 33 percent to 31 percent. Former state senator Bruce Keough came in third at 21 percent, and 15 percent of the voters hadn't picked a candidate yet. The margin of error was plus or minus 6 percent.
Sept. 2, 1816: From Concord, where he is living in the North End, Samuel F.B. Morse writes to his parents that he is engaged to a local girl, Lucretia Walker. “Never, never was a human being so blest as I am,” he writes.
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, 1991: Democratic presidential candidate Paul Tsongas tells the Concord Rotary: “I basically pide the world up into Washington and the rest of us, so my view is not that difference from yours.”
Sept. 3, 2001: A standoff closes Sewalls Falls Road and re-routes holiday traffic on Interstate 93. After 4½ hours, the police take a man into custody.
Sept. 3, 2003: The attorney general's office announces that New Hampshire will join at least two other states in suing the Environmental Protection Agency for adopting a revision to the Clean Air Act that will allow the nation's oldest power plants, refineries and other industrial facilities to upgrade without installing modern pollution controls.
