Sept. 28, 2003: Fall may just be arriving in much of New Hampshire, but in Plymouth, they’re skipping ahead to winter, the Monitor reports. As temperatures hover around 60 degrees this week and the last green leaves cling stubbornly to the trees, Tenney Mountain will launch its winter ski season. The Oct. 1 start could earn Tenney the coveted position as the first ski resort open for the year nationwide.
Sept. 28, 2002: With patriotic songs, brass horns and a pig roast, Bow celebrates its 275th anniversary.
Sept. 28, 1858: The Coos Republican of Lancaster reports on an unexpected guest: “Mr. Oliver Bemas of this town entrapped a lynx the past week in a trap set for bears. Although the trap weighing 24 pounds, he ascended a tree the length of the chain with the trap attached until he tore the bark from the tree. It is seldom that this species of animal are found in this section of the country.”
Sept. 29, 2003: Two days before pheasant hunting season starts in New Hampshire, 2,000 ring-necked pheasants arrive at Fish and Game headquarters from a game farm in New York. The birds, along with 11,000 more, will be released across the state in secret locations, some private, some public. It’s a tradition that began in 1896.
Sept. 29, 2002: Records fall, footballs fly and the scoreboard veritably smokes from the dizzying pace as Concord High School beats Manchester West 42-20 at Memorial Field in Concord, the Monitor reports. In the single greatest rushing display in the school’s history, Ryan Dunlavey shatters the school record for rushing yards in a game, cranking out 263 yards on 34 carries. The old record of 221 yards was held by Mark Champagne since 1973.
Sept. 29, 1864: Col. Samuel A. Duncan, a New Hampshirite, is badly wounded in the ankle while leading his African American infantry regiment in an attack in Virginia. “A few more such gallant charges, and to command colored troops will be the post of honor in the American armies,” General Benjamin Butler will write in his report on the battle.
Sept. 30, 2002: The state Supreme Court overturns the 2-year-old murder conviction of James Hall, a Concord man who admitted to strangling his mother, stowing her body in a trash can and dumping it in the woods. The court says that the judge in the 2000 trial tainted the verdict by issuing faulty instructions to the jury during their deliberations.
Sept. 30, 1864: Private Robert H. Potter, a Concord farmer before the war, is shot through the left lung during the Battle of Poplar Springs, Va. Because the surgeon says it is “a question of only a few moments with him,” Potter is carried to the dead house. The next day, a chaplain will find Potter lying in a pool of water, still breathing faintly. Potter will recover, return to the 6th New Hampshire regiment and, after his company takes a battery at Petersburg, be promoted to captain.
Sept. 30, 1768: In opposing the Townshend Act, imposed by London to raise revenue for defense of the colonies, “Americanus” suggests in the New Hampshire Gazette that the tax might be thwarted by “a general abstinence from the use of TEAS.”
Oct. 1, 1900: A 26-year-old egg farmer named Robert Frost moves to a 30-acre farm in Derry.
Oct. 2, 1856: Near the end of his term, President Pierce visits Concord to stump for James Buchanan, the Democrat nominated to succeed him. Pierce is greeted with a great parade and reception downtown. A fine horseman, he himself rides in the procession down Main Street.
Oct. 2, 1929: Vincent Cozzi of Albin Street in Concord is the sculptor of a fully-equipped 6-foot doughboy being carved from a three-ton block of granite at Swenson Granite Co. When it is completed, the statue will be shipped to Harrisonville, Mo., to stand in the square as a memorial to that town’s World War dead. Cozzi is using a photo of a Missouri soldier as a model for his statue, which he expects will take eight weeks to complete.
Oct. 2, 1963: Gov. John King announces the formation of the New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Women. The chairman will be Margaret Normandin of Laconia, the vice chairman Marion Alexander of Concord. The commission is modeled after a national commission created by President Kennedy in 1961.
Oct. 2, 1990: The U.S. Senate confirms the nomination of David H. Souter of Weare to the U.S. Supreme Court. At the State House in Concord, Souter tells a gathering of well-wishers: “I have been given much and much will be expected from me in return, and I will make that return to you and I will make it in the fullest measure that I can.”
Oct. 2, 1918: Two Concord soldiers – Marine Lieutenant Paul Corriveau and Private Herbert C. Drew – die in France on the same day. Corriveau is killed in action; Drew succumbs to pneumonia. Drew’s mother will call the Monitor’s attention to the coincidence that 20 years before, the two men were in the same kindergarten class at Walker School.
Oct. 3, 2002: The Pittsfield Police Department, along with several organizations that serve the area’s youth, hold an informational meeting to discuss substance abuse among teenagers in Pittsfield. The meeting comes in the wake of the deaths of a 17-year-old and a 28-year-old, both believed to be drug related.
Oct. 3, 1863: At the urging of Sarah Josepha Hale, a magazine editor from Newport, N.H., President Lincoln proclaims a national day of thanksgiving for the last Thursday of November, unifying a holiday previously celebrated at various times by the various states.
Oct. 3, 1878: An attempt is made to rob the Bristol Savings Bank. Explosives blow off the outer door of the safe and blow out both windows of the room. The inner door of the safe is not opened and the robbers leave without booty. “No serious efforts are made to apprehend the criminals and they escape capture,” a town history reports.
Oct. 4, 2003: A parish council is demanding that Bishop John McCormack reimburse $14,600 in expenses for the nine months its priest was suspended for alleged sexual misconduct, the Monitor reports. In a letter, the St. Charles parish council accused McCormack of seriously botching his investigation of the Rev. Paul Gregoire, who was cleared by the Vatican and returned to his Dover church in August.
Oct. 4, 2001: A vehicle inspector tells jurors that he’s “100 percent” certain that it was not a faulty fuel injection system inside baby sitter Nancy Lamprey’s truck that sent her careening into a tree, killing one child and injuring five others. Lamprey is later found guilty of manslaughter, first-degree assault and reckless conduct.
Oct. 4, 1860: The USS Marion docks at Portsmouth carrying four crewmen captured from the Erie, a slave ship, off the coast of Africa. The four will be found guilty of “being engaged in transporting negroes with the intent to enslave them.” Taken near the mouth of the Congo River, the Erie was carrying 897 blacks. Thirty died, and the rest were transported by U.S. authorities to Monrovia, Liberia.
