Feb. 17, 1740: John Sullivan is born in Somersworth. He will grow up to be a vain lawyer with British sympathies and an American Revolutionary War general, but not a good one.
Feb. 17, 1900: Deep in debt, the 96-year-old Abbot & Downing coach and wagon company is taken over by creditors. Employment has dropped from 300 to 200. The families of Lewis Downing and J. Stephens Abbot will no longer be involved in running the company after 1901, and the new bosses will struggle to keep the enterprise afloat.
Feb. 18, 2001: NASCAR fans in New Hampshire and around the country watch in disbelief as Dale Earnhardt crashes on the final lap of the Daytona 500. Although the TV audience won’t know it for a little while, Earnhardt dies instantly of head injuries when his famous No. 3 smashes head-on into the track wall. Speaking for many fans, local motorsports commentator Jerry Venne says, “There’s nothing worse that could happen at the speedway.”
Feb. 18, 1869: Fire destroys Concord’s Columbian Hotel.
Feb. 18, 1974: Archibald Cox, the special Watergate prosecutor fired four months earlier by President Nixon, receives a hero’s welcome at St. Paul’s School, where he graduated in 1930. Speaking of the possibility of impeachment, Cox says that by his definition, to meet the constitutional test of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” an offense would have to be “a major crime against the body politic.”
Feb. 19, 2001: Two Vermont teenagers accused of killing two Dartmouth professors are arrested at dawn at a truck stop in Indiana. A local sheriff makes the collar after hearing a trucker say on his CB radio that he’s giving a ride to two boys trying to get to California.
Feb. 20, 2000: A Maine man is killed by an avalanche while skiing on Mount Washington. A companion is able to climb to safety from the steep gully known as the Gulf of Slides.
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. 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, 1800: Concord joins other communities across the nation in a day of mourning and prayer for George Washington, dead two months.
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.
