March 4, 2002: In Concord a construction company begins making emergency structural repairs to the Sears block, giving some peace of mind to people who worry the decrepit building could collapse at any time.
March 4, 2001: Bishop Brady upsets previously undefeated Merrimack Valley, 45-44, in the quarterfinals of the Class I boys’ basketball tournament. Brady will advance to the finals but lose to Plymouth on a last-second basket.
March 4, 2000: Four Concord High hockey players have been suspended on the eve of the state tournament, the Monitor reports. The students are deemed to have violated school policy by attending a party where alcohol was served. School officials learned of the incident from the police – part of a new notification policy the department has put in place.
March 4, 1777: Concord’s town meeting votes to “break off all dealings” with attorney Peter Green, Dr. Phillip Carrigain and merchants John Stevens and Nathaniel Green. Although the four are among 156 area men who have signed the Association Test, an oath of loyalty to the Patriot cause, they are suspected of being Tories.
March 5, 1740: After years of disputes over Massachusetts claims on New Hampshire, King George II approves the boundary between the two colonies. The decision increases New Hampshire’s size by 3,500 square miles and costs Massachusetts 28 chartered towns, including Suncook, Bow, Concord, Penacook, Webster, Salisbury, Dunbarton, Weare, Hopkinton, Warner and Bradford.
March 6, 2001: A true blizzard sends New Hampshire residents to check the record books. The official tally in Concord is 18.1 inches. That’s a lot for one storm, but it’s considerably short of the 28 inches that fell in December 1969. Other parts of the state (Nottingham is tops with 40 inches) get hit harder.
March 6, 2000: Officials investigating the death of the 73-year-old Concord man known as “Cigar Bob” issue a warrant for the arrest of his former roommate. Dwayne Thompson, 46, who has not been seen since Robert Provencher’s body was found, is charged with second-degree murder.
March 6, 1991: With five seconds left in the state Class I semifinal basketball game, which is tied at 74, Merrimack Valley’s Scott Drapeau miraculously reaches around a Stevens High player to tip in a missed free throw. The MV win sets up a rematch with rival Pembroke Academy and a final showdown between Drapeau and Matt Alosa, two of the biggest basketball stars in area history. Alosa’s Spartans will win the title.
March 7, 1780: Concord town meeting voters elect a prosecutor to find out who “pulled down the house of Andrew Stone, and see what provision they will make for the support of his wife.” Stone was a soldier from Concord in the Continental Army. Apparently in his absence, a town history reports, “one of Stone’s daughters did not behave so well as the neighbors thought a faire and chaste maiden should do and they undertook to correct her manners by pulling the house down. Whether the girl behaved any better afterwards, tradition saith not.”
March 7, 1798: Crowds converge on Concord, which has grown to 2,000 inhabitants, to celebrate the ordination of the Rev. Asa McFarland, third minister of the village’s Congregational Church. The church is state-sanctioned and tax-supported. Accepting the call, the 28-year-old McFarland tells townspeople he has prayed that God will make him “an instrument to promote your spiritual happiness.” A grand ball at Stickney’s Tavern, on Main Street just up from the ferry crossing, celebrates the event.
March 7, 1825: A team of horses crossing the frozen Merrimack in Concord falls through the ice.
March 8, 2002: After losing a bet to House Democratic Leader Peter Burling that the St. Louis Rams would beat the New England Patriots in January’s Super Bowl, U.S. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat, visits the Legislative Office Building in Concord. He puts on a Patriots jersey with “Vinatieri” on the back.
March 8, 2001: Carolyn Bradley, principal of Concord’s Rundlett Middle School, announces she will resign at the end of the school year. Bradley has earned praise for her work in Concord and elsewhere in the state, but some will most remember her collection of eyeglasses: 13 pairs, a shade to match every suit.
March 8, 1987: Ray Barham’s first column appears in the Concord Monitor. Barham is serving life without parole at New Hampshire State Prison for a 1981 murder.
March 8, 1973: Gov. Mel Thomson makes a surprise visit to the state hospital kitchen and declares that the patients are being fed “poorly and revoltingly.” He orders samples of the food to be brought to the State House to be viewed by legislators and reporters.
March 9, 2002: The Monitor reports that Katrina Swett, a lawyer from Bow and the wife of former U.S. Rep. Dick Swett, may announce soon that she is running for the Second Congressional District seat, Democratic sources say. If Swett decides to run, she would be the first serious challenger this year to U.S. Rep. Charlie Bass.
March 9, 2000: The New Hampshire House votes, 191-163, to abolish the death penalty, a punishment the state last used in 1939. The measure moves next to the state Senate, but Gov. Jeanne Shaheen restates her position: If the bill reaches her desk, she will veto it.
March 9, 1812: Town meeting voters in Concord declare “that no swine be allowed to run at large on the road from Concord bridge to Boscawen bridge under a penalty to the owner of 25 cents for each offense.”
March 10, 2003: Hundreds pack Representatives Hall to protest Gov. Craig Benson’s two-year spending plan before the House and Senate finance committees, where many programs would be scaled back. Benson calls his proposal his “kitchen table budget” – just as families do when times are tough, he said, state leaders must sit down together, distinguish “wants” from “needs” and decide which luxuries they’ll do without. Paul Stokes, the president of the State Employees Association, declares that no family would make the choices that Benson made. “We can’t tell Grandma she can’t live here anymore,” he said.
March 10, 2000: A 7-year-old boy crossing Loudon Road on his way to Concord’s Dame School is struck by a pickup truck and seriously injured. The accident inspires residents of the Heights to press city officials for better traffic signals and more clearly marked crosswalks.
March 10, 1777: The Legislature orders the state’s first constitutional Fast Day, to be celebrated April 16. The holiday will not die out until the 1990s.
March 10, 1991: A funeral tribute is held at the Monitor for former longtime editor Tom W. Gerber, who died Feb. 22. Steve Winship, Gerber’s old friend and fellow Dartmouth College alum, places a green hood over Gerber’s typewriter. On the hood is this motto: “Words, words, words.”
March 10, 1978: The Executive Council approves 32-year-old Tom Rath of Concord to succeed David Souter as attorney general. Souter, 38, who held the job for seven years, is approved as a superior court judge. Gov. Meldrim Thomson Jr. made the nominations. Rath’s salary will be $33,500 a year.
March 10, 1853: The town of Concord holds its last town meeting – and then votes to become a city by a vote of 828-559.
