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, 1829: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ellen Tucker marry in Concord. The festivities last three days. The couple moves to Boston, where Emerson has just been ordained as assistant minister at the Second Church in the North End.
Oct. 1, 2000: A Monitor poll finds George W. Bush slightly ahead of Al Gore in New Hampshire. The state’s four electoral votes will be essential to Bush’s eventual victory.
Oct. 1, 1976: In an appearance at the New Hampshire Highway Hotel in Concord, Ronald Reagan tells 700 Republicans that Gov. Mel Thomson must be re-elected. Thomson, he says, is a “politician of national stature.”
Oct. 1, 2003: A Libertarian group called the Free Staters chooses New Hampshire as the site for their 20,000-person project. The group wants to apply their ideas of small government, low taxes and unfettered civil liberties on a wider scale.
Oct. 2, 2000: Campaigning in Concord, Ralph Nader criticizes the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has excluded him from tonight’s debate in Boston. He says the two major parties “have wasted democracy in this country.”
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. 3, 2003: Former senator Warren Rudman, who co-authored a report warning of terrorist threats before Sept. 11, 2001, is now calling attention to another potential security threat: unsecured nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the Monitor reports. In television ads in New Hampshire and Iowa, Rudman and former senator Sam Nunn urge Americans to work to keep weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists.
Oct. 3, 1924: Malcolm McLane is born in Manchester. McLane will serve on the Concord City Council from 1956 to 1976, including six years as mayor. He will also serve on the Executive Council and run an unsuccessful third-party race for governor against Mel Thomson.
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, 1861: A fire on the southwest corner of Main and Centre streets destroys the Merrimack House, a marble works and a doctor’s home and office.
Oct. 4, 1983: Chubb Life President John Swope announces his company’s plans to expand, bringing 300 new employees to Concord. “This is exactly the kind of employment Concord wants,” he says. “The only environmental problem we cause is we produce too much paper.”
Oct. 5, 2001: Arguing that New Hampshire has already done enough to erase inadequacies in school quality and taxes between rich and poor communities, the state files its objections to a new education lawsuit. The state is asking the court to throw out a challenge by property-poor communities, which charged last month that the Legislature’s solutions allow wide gaps between school systems to continue and ignore the demands of a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1997.
Oct. 5, 1817: An earthquake rocks Concord at about 11:40 a.m. It lasts one to two minutes.
Oct. 5, 1918: Concord’s Board of Health urges the discontinuation of public funerals because of the Spanish Influenza epidemic, which is at its peak. The board strongly suggests that until further notice only “kinsmen and very near friends attend the last rites of people who die.”
Oct. 5, 1985: The Band, minus Robbie Robertson, plays at the rickety old Capitol Theatre on Concord’s South Main Street.
Oct. 5, 1935: The first New Hampshire Peace Union convention meets in Concord. The state pacifist movement’s leader, Agnes Ryan, has stated the group’s goal, saying its members will witness the greatest thing “since Christ was on earth. You are going to live to see the war method abolished from the earth.”
Oct. 6, 2001: Concord High School senior Matt Delois wins the Class L inpidual golf championship, beating out sophomore teammate Mike Beeson for the title.
