Aug. 5, 1861: New Hampshire’s First Regiment, its three months’ enlistment up, returns to Concord without having fought a battle. Gov. Nathaniel Berry, the Governor’s Horse Guard and a large crowd of citizens greet the regiment and accompany it to the State House.
Aug. 5, 1976: The Monitor reports that Gov. Mel Thomson is doling out special wallet-sized cards that describe the bearer as a “personal friend” of the governor and say Thomson would “greatly appreciate any courtesy you may extend.” Thomson’s son and campaign manager, Peter Thomson, denies that anyone showing a card to a state official would receive special treatment. “They can’t fix a traffic ticket,” he says.
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. 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.”
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, 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. 9, 2003: Concord’s Little Blue takes a 13-6 loss to Bakersfield in the 16-year-old Babe Ruth World Series in Jamestown N.Y.
Aug. 9, 1746: A band of 50 to 100 Indians invades Rumford (Concord), but the Indians will be scared off the next morning by 30 armed guards who escort church-goers back to their garrisons.
Aug. 9, 1903: Omer T. Lassonde is born in Concord. An artist, he will be federal arts director of the WPA in New Hampshire during the Depression. The subjects of his many portraits will include U.S. Sen. Styles Bridges, Gov. John G. Winant and the King of Samoa.
Aug. 9, 1887: A warehouse is damaged by fire in downtown Concord. “The losses were not heavy, but the fire was a memorable one from the fact that so many boys were injured in jumping from the windows,” the New Hampshire Patriot reports.
Aug. 10, 2003: The Rev. Gene Robinson returns to his home church, St. Paul’s Church in Concord to the hugs and handshakes of hundreds of parishioners and leads the blessing there for the first time since becoming the first openly gay Episcopalian confirmed as a bishop.
Aug. 10, 1987: Owners of the Ramada Inn on Main Street in Concord get city permission to build over Storrs Street. “The building that is there right now is, quite frankly, ugly. But what you see there now is not what you’ll get,” says lawyer Ray D’Amante. The plan never happens.
Aug. 11, 2003: The Concord City Council strikes a deal with Portsmouth developer Michael Simchik to give both the Sears block and the Penacook tannery some much-needed TLC. Simchik will spend about $10 million to design and build a six-story building full of offices, stores and apartments on the site of the former Sears block downtown. The city will spend about $5 million on a parking garage with at least 330 spaces adjacent to the new building.
Aug. 11, 1746: Thirty or 40 Indians attack a seven-man military party in Rumford (Concord) near the current site of Concord Hospital. The Indians kill five men outright – Samuel and Jonathan Bradley, Obadiah Peters, John Bean and John Lufkin – and strip and mutilate their bodies. Alexander Roberts and William Stickney are captured. The dead are brought to town in a cart and buried immediately.
