July 2, 1941: Joe DiMaggio hits a line drive home run over the head of Ted Williams in left field to break Wee Willie Keeler’s record 44-game hitting streak. On base when he hits it is Yankee third baseman Red Rolfe of Penacook.
July 2, 1976: Gov. Mel Thomson orders a full investigation into what happened to 1,500 pounds of chicken that never made it to a state worker picnic at New Hampshire Hospital. The birds, worth $780, were contaminated and disposed of.
July 2, 1776: Dr. Josiah Bartlett and William Whipple represent New Hampshire as the Continental Congress declares American independence.
July 2, 1863: New Hampshire’s best known Civil War hero, Col. Edward E. Cross, is mortally wounded at Gettysburg. Cross, of Lancaster, led the Fifth New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment on the Peninsula and in the battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. As he lies dying of a gunshot wound in the abdomen, Cross’s last coherent words are: “I think my boys will miss me.”
July 3, 2002: New Hampshire lawyers representing about 100 people charging they were molested by Roman Catholic priests are talking to the church about a settlement, the Monitor reports.
July 3, 1976: Gov. Mel Thomson says if Canada doesn’t allow athletes for Nationalist China to participate in the Montreal Olympics, he will order the Taiwanese flag flown at the State House and at his official residence in East Concord throughout the Games.
July 3, 1865: A railroad accident in Northfield wrecks several freight cars and fatally scalds one passenger. An excursion to The Weirs the next day is canceled, as the road is impassable.
July 3, 1869: The first train runs to the summit of Mount Washington.
July 4, 1858: The Rev. George Channing suggests residents of Lancaster celebrate Independence Day with a pledge of sobriety. His temperance talk is billed in newspapers as “a lecture upon the disastrous consequences from the use of intoxicating drinks and of tobacco in all its forms to the souls and bodies of men.”
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 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, 1859: Austin Goings launches the 65-foot sidewheeler Surprise on Lake Sunapee. It is the first steamboat on the lake. Goings will soon leave to fight in the Civil War, and it will be 17 years before transportation on the lake begins in earnest.
July 4, 1776: New Hampshire delegates Dr. Josiah Bartlett and William Whipple, with the rest of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, accept a draft of the Declaration of Independence.
July 4, 1919: Communities statewide honor veterans of the World War on Homecoming Day. The state offers each veteran a $100 bonus and will eventually pay 19,425 claims. The Legislature has also voted to pay homage to the war dead with the building of War Memorial Bridge across the Piscataqua River from Portsmouth to Kittery.
July 4, 1820: The fare from Concord to Boston by stagecoach is cut to $1, the result of competition between two lines.
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 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 6, 1774: Several members of New Hampshire’s Committee of Correspondence meet in Portsmouth to decide whether to accept an invitation from Virginians to attend a Continental Congress in Philadelphia in September. Royal Gov. John Wentworth and Sheriff Parker of Rockingham County invade the meeting and kick the dissidents out of Assembly hall. The men move to a nearby tavern, where they resolve to meet in July to elect delegates to the convention.
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.
