Feb. 19, 2003: Democratic Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina brings a populist, blue-collar message to Page Belting factory in Concord, his first appearance in New Hampshire since joining the 2004 presidential race.
Feb. 19, 1965: Television personality Jack Paar films a show in Gilmanton. He tells school board member Mrs. Harold Bryant he wanted to do a show about “a small, friendly New England Town.” Paar and his seven-man crew eat dinner at Bryant’s home.
Feb. 19, 1986: Bob Smith and a group of congressmen return from Southeast Asia convinced that Americans are living in Vietnam but decline to discuss evidence. “I went over with a gut feeling and I came back with an absolute feeling they’re there. The question now is how to bring them back,” Smith says.
Feb. 20, 2001: World-renowned environmentalist and Dartmouth College professor Donella Meadows dies at age 59 of bacterial meningitis. A regular contributor to New Hampshire newspapers, Meadows first made her mark in 1972 with the publication of “The Limits to Growth,” considered a seminal work in the field of environmental analysis.
Feb. 20, 1994: On the way to spring training, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Tewksbury of Concord, winner of 33 games the last two seasons, stops in New York for salary arbitration. He loses. His salary for 1994 will be $3.5 million.
Feb. 20, 1772: Philip Carrigain is born in Concord. His father is a local physician. Philip will graduate from Dartmouth, practice law in Concord and become New Hampshire’s secretary of state. Chosen in part for his distinguished handwriting, in 1816 he will produce the first map of the state to show town boundaries.
Feb. 20, 1864: The Battle of Olustee, Fla., costs the 7th New Hampshire Infantry Regiment 209 casualties. Col. Joseph A. Abbott blames his regiment’s retreat and defeat on an order before the battle that the left wing of his regiment give up its Spencer repeating carbines to arm a mounted regiment. In return, the men were issued inferior Springfield rifles, 42 of which had been pronounced “unserviceable.”
Feb. 20, 1996: Pat Buchanan wins the New Hampshire primary, defeating Bob Dole by one percentage point. The Monitor’s headline: “Pat’s peak is Dole’s downfall.” The Union Leader’s: “Read Our Lips.”
Feb. 22, 2002: At the Winter Games of Salt Lake City, the U.S. hockey team loses 3-2 to Canada in the gold medal game. Concord native and team member Tara Mounsey says, “It was difficult, but it doesn’t take away from what we’ve done this year.”
Feb. 21, 2000: More than 500 students join Concord’s Bob Tewksbury at Beaver Meadow Elementary School to celebrate the joys of reading. A former major league pitcher, Tewksbury tells the youngsters he used books to help fill the down time between starts. Reading, he says, “engages not only our minds but our hearts.”
Feb. 21, 1968: The death of 21-year-old Army Sergeant Ronald D. Roach of Concord is confirmed. He had been missing for nine days since coming under mortar fire in Hue. Roach was the most valuable player on the Concord High hockey team in 1964, the year he graduated. His father Arthur says his son believed in his military mission: “His letters always said we must help South Vietnam.”
Feb. 21, 1848: While walking through the U.S. Capitol, New Hampshireman Benjamin Brown French, the former House clerk, peers into the speaker’s offices and sees Rep. John Quincy Adams lying “perfectly unconscious.” The former president has had a stroke. “I shall probably never look upon him again in life,” French writes. Adams will die two days later.
Feb. 22, 1912: The reorganized Abbot & Downing Co. has orders for 45 express wagons in addition to passenger wagons for Yellowstone Park. This assures work for 50 men. “We have made a start,” says Samuel Eastman, the Concord businessman who purchased the failing company 5½ months ago.
Feb. 22, 1800: Concord joins other communities across the nation in a day of mourning and prayer for George Washington, dead two months.
Feb. 23, 2003: For more than 100 years, a large plume of black smoke has hung above the chugging locomotives of the Cog Railway on Mount Washington, the Monitor reports. That’s all about to change, however, as the railroad’s owners switch from coal to cleaner-burning heating oil to power the railroad’s seven locomotives up and down the 6,300-foot mountain, said the railroad’s owner, Wayne Presby.
Feb. 23, 1795: A group of men meets at Butters’ Tavern to plan a bridge across the Merrimack River. It will be built near the site of today’s Manchester Street bridge.
Feb. 23, 1799: Seven men hold the first Masonic meeting in Concord at Gale’s Anchor Tavern.
Feb. 23, 1965: Religious and educational leaders protest legislation to bar certain speakers from state property as “legislative mischief.” The bill would prohibit any representative of an organization defined by state law as “subversive.” It has the support of Gov. John King, who has proposed a ban on representatives of the Communist Party and the American Nazi Party.
Feb. 23, 1945: On the fifth day after the landing on Iwo Jima, the Marines take Mount Suribachi. Private Rene A. Gagnon of Hooksett, New Hampshire, is one of five Marines (along with a Navy corpsman) who raise the American flag on the mountain. The picture will become one of the most famous war photographs ever taken.
Feb. 23, 1847: A meeting is held in Concord to organize a relief effort to aid victims of the Irish famine. The following donations are collected: $1,293.02 and 100 bushels of grain from residents of Concord; $5.25 and 168 bushels of grain from Pembroke; and $5.62 from Gilmanton.
Feb. 24, 1853: Concord’s “Old John” Virgin, a veteran of the War of 1812, is found frozen in his house on Sugar Ball. Virgin boasted all his life of having fought at Tippecanoe with William Henry Harrison. An invalid, he had “an ulcerous sore on one of his legs, which was very offensive,” according to a contemporary account. Virgin earned a pension of $96 a year and was determined to live on it. When he came to town, his “loud patriotic harangues always attracted attention.” He had no friends because he would have none; he lived alone and died alone. Only the sexton attended his funeral.
Feb. 24, 1942: Despite a labor shortage caused by the war, state Agriculture Director Walter Felker appeals to New Hampshire farmers to increase their maple syrup harvest this year. The hope is that the syrup can replace sugar, which is in short supply.
Feb. 24, 1980: Tom Gerber, editor of the Concord Monitor, grumbles to the Washington Post about all the attention paid during the presidential primary to Union Leader publisher William Loeb: “We don’t get it because we’re decent. We do what the hell is right. We play the news straight. We keep our goddamn editorial opinions out of the news columns. We’re not crackpots, we’re professionals.”
Feb. 24, 1965: Citing high local taxes, the Concord City Council urges the Legislature to “provide a substantial additional source or sources of revenue to the city of Concord.” Decades later, Concord is still waiting.
Feb. 25, 2003: Bishop John McCormack apologizes for failing to protect children from abusive priests and asks lay Catholics to help him deliver the church to a safer, less secretive future. “I have been humbled by my experience and have recognized my inadequacies,” McCormack tells nearly 300 priests and parish leaders invited to hear him speak at St. John’s.
Feb. 25, 1780: Jonathan Harvey is born in Sutton. He will grow up to be president of the New Hampshire Senate in 1818, the same year his brother Matthew is speaker of the New Hampshire House.
