March 17, 1681: The Governor’s Council proclaims this a day of public fasting and prayer for John Cutt, New Hampshire’s first colonial governor, who has fallen ill. Cutt soon dies, but New Hampshire will observe Fast Day for more than three centuries.
March 18, 1852: George G. Fogg, Concord editor, Free Soil leader and temperance man, puts the best face on his party’s election loss to the Democrats. “The men who have carried this state by rum this year must take the responsibility for it next year,” he writes. “The wedge they have so successfully used to divide and conquer their opponents will, ere long, be found severing the joints and marrow of their organization.”
March 19, 2000: On its way to the NCAA championship game, fifth-seeded Florida cruises past fourth-seeded Illinois in the second round of the men’s basketball tournament. Concord’s Matt Bonner, a freshman, sums up his first weekend of March Madness this way: “Before the game I was nervous . . . oh wow, I can’t even explain how nervous I was. But once you go up and down the court a few times you forget about it.”
March 19, 1967: The calendar says spring is about to start, but few believe it. The low temperature in Concord falls to 16 below zero, tying the record for the coldest March day in the 20th century. This follows a reading of 13 below the day before and 10 below the day before that.
March 20, 2001: With back-to-back winter storms having drained snow removal budgets around the state, Gov. Jeanne Shaheen asks President Bush to declare a federal snow emergency for New Hampshire. The cost of cleaning up from the most recent storm was estimated at $1.5 million.
March 20, 1777: Barnstead town meeting voters agree to pay 5 shillings per day for “labor on the highway.” They also vote “not to raise any money for schools.”
March 21, 2003: As the war accelerates in Iraq, residents throughout New Hampshire react. “I have really mixed feelings about it,” says Debbie Heckman, as she gets her hair cut at Headlines in Concord. “I support the soldiers and sailors 100 percent, but I just wish it hadn’t come to this.”
March 22, 1901: The Massachusetts-New Hampshire boundary is finally settled.
March 22, 1851: Former New Hampshire governor and U.S. senator Isaac Hill dies at the age of 63. Hill was once editor of Concord’s New Hampshire Patriot and served in President Andrew Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet.”
March 22, 1991: After a long, tawdry, televised trial, a Rockingham County jury finds 23-year-old Pam Smart guilty of arranging the murder of her husband. Smart’s teenage lover shot Gregory Smart to death 1990. The judge sentences Pam Smart to life without parole.
March 23, 2001: Concord was New Hampshire’s fastest-growing city in the 1990s, the U.S. Census Bureau announces. The official 2000 population is listed as 40,687.
March 23, 1799: John Prentiss publishes the first issue of the New Hampshire Weekly Sentinel in Keene. The Sentinel claims to be the fifth oldest newspaper in the country.
March 23, 1773: Loudon holds its first town meeting at the home of Abraham Batchelder.
