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, 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 8, 1987: Ray Barham’s first column appears in the Monitor. Barham is serving life without parole at New Hampshire State Prison for a 1981 murder.
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, 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 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 9, 1943: A winter for the ages continues as the temperature in Concord falls to 16 below zero. Just three weeks earlier, the city suffered through its coldest day ever recorded, when the mercury fell to 37 below.
March 9, 2003: The state attorney general’s office has spent the past year investigating priests who broke the law by molesting children, the Monitor reports. But they turned up another problem as well: priests who violated their vow of celibacy by having sex with women, with men and with other priests.
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.
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, 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 11, 1734: Its right to self-government recognized seven years after the first white settlers arrive, Rumford in Essex County, Mass., convenes its first town meeting at 2 p.m. In time the town will be known as Concord, N.H.
March 11, 2000: After 15 months of negotiations, the Concord teachers’ union and school board have a tentative agreement on a new contract, the Monitor reports.
March 12, 2000: Bishop Guertin defeats Concord, 3-2, in the Division I hockey championship game, ending the Crimson Tide’s run of four consecutive state titles.
March 13, 1782: The Legislature meets in Concord for the first time. The site is “the Old North,” the First Congregational Church. The building will burn in 1870. It was on the site of the current Walker School.
March 13, 1852: For the third time in three years, local voters reject a plan to turn Concord from a town to a city. The vote is 458 in favor and 614 against.
March 13, 1855: Edward H. Rollins of Concord and his American (Know-Nothing) Party sweep the Democrats out of office in New Hampshire for the first time in decades. The Know-Nothings are anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic, but their party is also seen as a vehicle to oppose the pro-slavery views of the Democrats.
March 13, 1929: Ray Barham is born. In 1981, he will murder his estranged wife’s boyfriend in Wolfeboro, earning a life sentence in New Hampshire State Prison. Six years later, he will begin writing a Monitor column that will earn him several honors including the state columnist of the year award in 1996. He will die in prison Jan. 28, 2002.
March 13, 1974: U.S. Sen. Norris Cotton, long a supporter of President Nixon, says he would not have announced his retirement this year if he had known the Watergate issue would remain so “hot.” “I think only rats desert a sinking ship,” Cotton says. “I’m no rat.” Cotton makes his remarks in Concord, where he had come to witness Gov. Meldrim Thomson’s signing of a bill allowing Franklin Pierce Law Center to grant degrees.
March 13, 1993: People hunker down for what television has hyped as the “storm of the century.” Concord gets 17 inches of snow. Most roads will be clear by morning.
March 13, 2001: Spurred on by months of intense debate, more than 2,100 Bow residents flood the polls to vote on whether to abandon the traditional town meeting form of government. (A majority of voters say no.) A year earlier, when turnout was lighter, proposals to switch to official ballot voting for both the town and the school district came much closer to passing.
March 13, 2003: Gladys Manyan dies at the age of 91. Manyan, known to many as the Monitor’s resident rural columnist, worked for the paper for more than 25 years, reporting news from Franklin, and at the same time, from her own life. In 1966, she began writing “A Domestic View,” a short column that combined recipes with stories of Manyan’s family, her Salisbury farm and her adventures as a country homemaker. That piece of weekly work soon became “Country Woman,” a Monitor feature that won Manyan a slew of loyal fans.
