Aug. 27, 1927: At a railroad crossing in Tilton, four young people, including two local girls, are killed just after midnight when an express train strikes the car in which they are riding. Witnesses say the Concord-to-Laconia night flyer struck the car squarely, knocking it into the Woodlawn Inn. The inn’s wall is crushed. The impact of the collision was so great that the cow catcher on the locomotive was “ripped from its hangings.” The victims were thrown free of the car and “horribly mangled,” the Monitor reports. Tilton residents argue that the crossing should be better marked.
Aug. 27, 1991: Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder arrives in Concord and plays coy about plans to run for president. “I’m not unmindful at all of all the portents, the omens and the signs relative to being in New Hampshire. I take all of them seriously.” Wilder will eventually jump into the race but then back out.
Aug. 28, 2000: The board of directors of First Night New Hampshire announces it won’t hold its annual New Year’s Eve celebration this year. The organization has accumulated debts over the past three years, in part due to cold weather and a 1999 bomb scare.
Aug. 29, 1862: While ministering to soldiers of the 2nd New Hampshire Infantry at Second Bull Run, Harriet P. Dame of Concord is captured. She is taken to Stonewall Jackson’s headquarters and will be released the next day. As long as the 2nd serves, Dame will be its “angel of mercy,” according to Maj. J.D. Cooper. “Many days,” he will write, “she has stood by the side of our noble, patriotic sons who have gone to their long homes, doing all in her power to alleviate their sufferings, and soothe their sorrows in the dying hour.”
Aug. 29, 1900: Workmen erecting electric light poles find two rusted tin boxes buried by a dirt road in Bow. The boxes contain documents stolen from the State House more than five years earlier in a heist that netted $6,000 in cash.
Aug. 30, 1790: A town meeting approves spending 100 pounds to build a “town house” on land near Main and Court streets. The town house will be a meeting place for townspeople and the General Court.
Aug. 30, 1824: Amos Parker, editor of Concord’s weekly Statesman, goes to Boston to invite the Marquis de Lafayette to visit Concord during the Revolutionary War hero’s U.S. tour. Lafayette agrees to come after the dedication of the Bunker Hill Memorial the following June. Parker describes Lafayette as “a dignified personage, in his 60s, grown portly,” wearing buff-colored cotton pants, a swans’-down vest, a blue broadcloth coat with gilt buttons, a beaver top hat and plain shoes.
Aug. 31, 1866: The Rev. Nathaniel Bouton, author of a Concord history a decade earlier, is named state historian. He will hold this position for 11 years, during which he will compile 10 volumes of provincial and state papers for publication.
Aug. 31, 1892: The statue of antislavery Sen. John P. Hale is completed outside the State House.
Sept. 1, 1964: The U.S. Census Bureau announces that New Hampshire has retained its national ranking in estimated population figures. With a population of 654,000, the state comes in 46th. Vermont is the only New England state with fewer people.
Sept. 2, 1947: Plans to install the city’s first parking meters downtown draw the ire of Concord residents. “I will make one pledge: I never will put 10 cents into a meter in order to shop. I will park my car over on Concord Plains and walk in first,” writes Charles H. Nixon in a letter to the editor.
