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, 1862: After a federal draft call for nine-month volunteers, the city of Concord offers a bounty of $100 to any resident who will sign up by Sept. 15.
Aug. 31, 1866: The Rev. Nathaniel Bouton, author of a Concord history a decade earlier, is named state historian. He will hold 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, 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.
Sept. 1, 2000: The high school football season kicks off with a couple of routs. Concord wallops Portsmouth, 42-0, while Kearsarge runs over Bow, 41-0.
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. 2, 2002: Concord police arrest a man they say kidnapped two teenagers at knifepoint at Wal-Mart on Loudon Road. James McLaughlin will be arraigned on two counts of kidnapping, one count of robbery, one count of felon in possession of a deadly weapon, and possession or a dangerous weapon while committing a violent crime.
Sept. 3, 1861: Thirty-one train cars carry the Third New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment out of the Concord station.
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. 4, 1929: Two men are arrested on slot machine charges at the Bradford Fair a day after a visit from Willoughby Slattery, the county solicitor. The fair is in danger of being closed because of excessive gambling on the midway, a move the Monitor would not oppose. “The Bradford fair this year really isn’t a fair in any way, certainly not an agricultural fair,” the paper says. “There are no exhibits with the exception of a single pumpkin of huge proportions.”
Sept. 5, 1929: Amateur radio enthusiast Robert Byron of 15 Fayette St. in Concord talks for an hour with Robert E. Byrd’s South Pole expedition 12,000 miles away. He says the reception is remarkably clear. Two years earlier, Byrd spoke to a packed house at the City Auditorium. Byron’s radio exploits are well known in town. The year before, he was the first to inform the Germans by radio that the Bremen had reached Greenley Island in Canada, meaning that three German pilots had succeeded in making the first east-to-west transatlantic flight.
Sept. 5, 1987: The temperature falls to 34 degrees, a record low.
Sept. 5, 1990: During an editorial board at the Monitor, U.S. Sen. Gordon Humphrey shares this assessment of a proposed state constitutional amendment to switch back from annual to biennial legislative sessions: “Legislators are busybodies. God love ‘em, but God restrain ‘em. And if God won’t restrain ‘em, make the constitution do it.”
