April 20, 1965: Concord Police Chief Walter Carlson reports that the city’s population is up by 219 adults and 20 minors over 1964. The report also reveals there are 62 more dogs in the city this year than last.
April 21, 2002: Last year, the state’s nursing schools turned out 150 graduates, the Monitor reports. At least 500 nurses were needed to fill the spaces that had opened up. And if the trend continues, the consequences for the state’s health care system will be severe, according to Mike Hill of the New Hampshire Hospital Association.
April 21, 1789: When John Adams arrives at Federal Hall in New York after being elected the nation’s first vice president, he is greeted by John Langdon of New Hampshire, president pro tempore of the Senate. There is as yet no oath of office for the vice president, so Langdon simply escorts Adams to his seat at the head of the chamber.
April 21, 1881: At 6 p.m., a small closed car drawn by a horse leaves Abbot & Downing shops for Fosterville. The ride ushers in the era of trolleys in Concord. The cars, made by Abbot & Downing, will carry 200,000 people in their first year of operation.
April 22, 1861: Meeting at the South Congregational Church, a group of Concord women organizes an effort to supply soldiers with “articles necessary to their comfort in the field.” They have raised $200 and resolve to spend $150 on flannel for shirts for the First New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
April 22, 1947: John Harrigan is born in Littleton. Harrigan will become a reporter for the Nashua Telegraph and the New Hampshire Sunday News before taking over as publisher of both the Coos County Democrat and the News and Sentinel of Colebrook. When reporters, both near and far, are looking for the voice of the North Country, they will often turn to Harrigan.
April 22, 1995: Poet Jane Kenyon dies of leukemia at her home in Wilmot.
April 23, 2003: The state’s first criminal trial of a priest named in the clergy sexual abuse scandal ends in a mistrial after the jury deliberated nearly 14 hours over three days without reaching a verdict. One juror says that all 12 jurors believed that the Rev. George Robichaud was guilty of rape and attempted rape but that two jurors were unwilling to convict him because conflicting testimony questioned whether Robichaud’s accuser was a minor at the time.
April 23, 2001: Kimballs Country Store in Pembroke gets a quirky piece of notoriety thanks to some number-crunching from the 2000 census. New Hampshire’s population centroid – or that point around which there is an equal concentration of the state’s population in every direction – is inside the store.
April 23, 1945: So far, it appears that Mrs. John Maken of Manchester will be the state’s entry in a national contest aimed at identifying the mother with the most children in the service. Nine sons and a daughter-in-law of Mrs. Maken have been in uniform.
April 24, 1992: The Concord Monitor publishes its last afternoon edition. Henceforth it will be a morning paper.
April 24, 1853: Miffed that Franklin Pierce, now president, has relegated him to a lowly clerical job, Benjamin Brown French reminisces in his journal about the early days of their friendship. In 1831, on the way to serve in the New Hampshire House, the two met in Hopkinton, Pierce on horseback, French in a chaise. In Concord, “we took rooms at Gass’s Eagle Hotel, nearly opposite each other, & then commenced a friendship that has been, on my part, almost an affection. From that day to this I have not wronged Frank Pierce in thought, word or deed.”
April 24, 1847: The Portsmouth Journal reports that neither the 40-year-old federal prohibition on the slave trade nor the ships built in the Portsmouth Navy Yard for the African Squadron have managed to stop the wholesale capture of Blacks in Africa. “So expeditiously do the fast sailing vessels employed in the slave trade manage their business,” the paper reports, “that they will run into some inlet, where four hours suffice for them to take in wood, water, and several hundred slaves.”
April 24, 1900: Harriet P. Dame dies in Concord at the age of 85. She was renowned for having ventured south with the 2nd New Hampshire Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. She served as a nurse and helpmate to the soldiers and was captured at Bull Run.
April 26, 1948: On the first day of spring vacation, Concord students take to the streets of downtown brandishing placards. Their cause: a new swimming pool in West Concord. The state Board of Health closed the old one as unsanitary in 1945, and a committee of the city’s alderman has recommended against spending $110,000 to build a new one.
April 27, 2001: Observers of Lake Winnipesaukee are still waiting to declare ice-out – the point at which the Mount Washington cruise ship can make all its ports of call. Last year ice-out was declared April 10.
April 27, 1987: U.S. Rep. Bob Smith is among a group offering a $1 million reward to any Southeast Asian defector who frees an American POW.
April 27, 1861: The city of Concord appropriates $10,000 to aid the families of local volunteers who go off to war. It expects the state to reimburse it, and for the most part it will. By the end of the year, the city will have doled out $3,000 to soldiers’ families.
April 27, 1977: Gov. Meldrim Thomson says a planned protest at the Seabrook nuclear plant site is “cover for terrorist activity,” adding: “Once the demonstrators occupy the site, they do not plan to leave alive.”
April 27, 1987: Fire breaks out in the south end of the Legislative Office Building in Concord. Hundreds gather to watch as a cool wind whips the flames pouring from the roof. Water streams out the door and down the steps into the street. The building suffers extensive smoke and water damage.
