July 4, 1820: The fare from Concord to Boston by stagecoach is cut to $1, the result of competition between two lines.
July 4, 1842: Hooligans set a barrel of tar on fire in the State House plaza. “The tossing of fire-balls had begun when the police of this town interfered,” according to a city history.
July 4, 1858: Congressman Mason W. Tappan reads the Declaration of Independence on the State House lawn. Solon Gould, an inflexible Concord Democrat, happens by as Tappan is reading the Declaration’s litany of complaints against King George. Thinking that the object of Tappan’s scorn is President James Buchanan, Gould proclaims the reading a “Black Republican affair” and storms off.
July 4, 1891: A crowd of 6,000 to 7,000 people gathers at the circus grounds just above Bridge Street along the Merrimack River to watch a holiday baseball game. The Concord YMCA team, a perennial power, defeats the Concord Stars, 13-12. “Fielding at times was rather loose,” the Monitor reports.
July 4, 1899: Ten thousand people attend the dedication of the Memorial Arch in front of the State House. Cut from Concord granite, it is 33 feet, 8 inches high and 53 feet wide. Though built on state land, it was paid for by the city and commemorates Concord’s war veterans.
July 5, 1874: Prominent Concord lawyer Anson Southard Marshall dies of a gunshot wound. The previous day, Marshall took his wife and young son for a Fourth of July picnic near Lake Penacook. The family heard target shooting by a militia company nearby. Marshall stood to call to the shooters and request that they be careful. He was immediately shot in the abdomen.
July 5, 1979: In Concord scouting toward a presidential bid, U.S. Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas comments on the vulnerability of President Jimmy Carter and how it has raised hopes within his party. “I walked into the Senate cloakroom the other day and said, ‘Mr. President,’ and 20 Republicans turned around,” Dole says.
July 5, 2002: Ted Williams, the legendary Boston Red Sox outfielder, dies at the age of 83. Local fan Tony Heath, owner of Quality Cash Market in East Concord, reflects “We shared the same dream. That was to see the Red Sox win the World Series. It’s too bad he didn’t live to see that happen.”
July 6, 1849: The Legislature officially gives Concord permission to become a full-fledged city. One big argument in favor of abandoning the town meeting form of government is that there is no place big enough to accommodate all the town’s voters.
July 6, 1941: With a crowd of 60,948 jamming Yankee Stadium for the dedication of a monument to Lou Gehrig, Gehrig’s former teammate and bridge partner, Red Rolfe of Penacook, hits three singles and a homer in the first game of a doubleheader sweep. Yankee center fielder Joe DiMaggio extends his hitting streak to 48 games. Rolfe is in a hot spell of his own. Over eight games, he will record 15 hits in 28 at-bats.
July 6, 2001: Joseph Whittey is found guilty of murdering 81-year-old Yvonne Fine in Concord nearly 20 years ago. Although Whittey had been a suspect early on, it wasn’t until last year that investigators discovered DNA evidence allowing them to charge him with the crime. Already in prison for attempted murder, Whittey is sentenced to life.
July 6, 2002: The State House is getting a makeover, the Monitor reports. The white portion of the octagonal structure, just below the gilded part of the dome, will be stripped and restored to the tune of $174,000.
July 7, 1816: Concord awakens to a hard freeze.
July 7, 1847: President James Polk visits Concord, prompting a parade of bands up Main Street. “The streets were alive with sightseers and from the windows, ladies greeted the president with waving handkerchiefs,” one newspaper reports.
July 7, 1853: In arguing for the passage of prohibition in New Hampshire, George G. Fogg, a Concord editor, says legislators should line up against “the manufacturers of drunkards, paupers, and criminals.” The measure fails.
July 7, 1989: The state celebrates the opening of the new $30 million New Hampshire Hospital on Clinton Street in Concord. At 199,000 square feet, it is the state’s largest building project ever.
July 8, 1965: Construction of a new King’s Department Store begins on Loudon Road in Concord. Plans also call for a supermarket and five smaller stores.
July 8, 1967: Monitor reporters set out in the streets of Concord to test a Harris poll’s findings that President Lyndon B. Johnson’s popularity is rising and that the Vietnam War will be a decisive factor in the 1968 presidential election. Interviews with 115 people in Concord turn up these results: 28.7 percent like Johnson more than they did in 1964, 58 percent like him less. Most of those who criticize Johnson cite his handling of the war as the main reason for their discontent.
July 8, 2003: At a house party in Concord, presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry tells a group of several dozen New Hampshire residents that he is the most electable of the nine Democrats seeking the party’s nomination. Not everybody walks away convinced by Kerry’s pitch. “I think he’s very much a Washington politician,” says Ariana Hodes, a Derryfield High School senior who’ll cast her first vote for president in the 2004 election. “And as a skeptical, cynical almost 18-year-old I have to say that is one of my concerns. . . voting for a politician who’s been in Washington, who’s been in the game. And that’s what I like about Dean, that he is very earnest and still very real about what he’s saying.”
July 9, 2000: The new owner of the May King restaurant on Concord’s Loudon Road plans a total makeover, the Monitor reports. The renovated restaurant, to be called Ginger Garden, will offer Chinese and Japanese cuisine, including the capital city’s first sushi bar.
July 9, 2003: Summer school begins at the State House, as lawmakers try to write a budget that can pass into law. The session comes after Gov. Craig Benson stamped a big red VETO on the Legislature’s $2.6 billion budget and succeeded in blocking an override.
July 10, 1879: John B. Buzzell is hanged at the state prison. Buzzell broke off his engagement with a young woman. She sued him for breach of promise, and he hired a young man to kill her. The young man fired a pistol through her window, blowing her head off. Buzzell was acquitted of murder. Later, when the hired gun turned state’s evidence to save his own hide, Buzzell was convicted as an accessory to murder and sentenced to die. As he awaited the noose, his case was used by legislative proponents of a measure to abolish the death penalty in New Hampshire. The measure failed.
July 10, 1927: A U.S. Army flying school opens at the Concord airport with the arrival of the first class of 20 pilots in training. With the opening of the school, the Monitor reports, Concord becomes the air defense site for “all that territory in a triangle running from Concord to the fishing port of Gloucester and its splendid harbor, west to the more important commercial harbor at Portland and back to Concord.”
July 10, 2000: Concord’s city council approves a deal to split the cost of a connector road between Clinton and Pleasant streets with St. Paul’s School and Concord Hospital.
July 10, 2003: Former Vermont governor Howard Dean gives the hard sell to a huge gathering in Concord, holding up his recent fundraising success – and the unexpectedly large crowd – as proof that his insurgent presidential candidacy is no more liberal than mainstream America. “That’s how you beat George W. Bush,” he says, referring to the fact that half of the 60,000 contributors to his campaign had never given money to a political candidate before.
