March 31, 2002: A Concord man found dead in his Hall Street apartment was murdered, the police announce. Tobby Publicover, a 28-year-old described as a “gentle giant” by his mother, died of a gunshot wound.
March 31, 1731: Four years after Concord’s settlement begins, townspeople appropriate 10 pounds “for the instruction of the children in reading, etc.” The first teacher is Hannah Abbot, 30. The following year, the town will order the selectmen to “find books for the use of the inhabitants . . . on the town’s cost.”
March 31, 1791: David George, a Concord tailor, advertises his new prices: $3 for a genteel suit of superfine broadcloth; $2 for an ordinary suit of course cloth.
March 31, 1800: Concord residents vote “to accept a bell if one can be obtained by subscription, and cause the same to be rung at such times as the town may think proper.”
April 1, 2000: Concord’s Matt Bonner gets a taste of Final Four basketball as a freshman, scoring four points and grabbing two rebounds in 14 minutes of play. His team, the University of Florida, defeats North Carolina, 71-59, to advance to the championship game.
April 1, 1891: William M. Chase, a prominent Concord lawyer and longtime school board member and a trustee of Dartmouth College, is appointed an associate justice on the state Supreme Court.
April 1, 1997: In a bout of April Fools weather on baseball’s Opening Day, Concord gets seven inches of snow. Jaffrey gets 27 inches.
April 1, 1878: Shortly after midnight, April Fools pranksters dig up the body of executed murderer Joseph Lapage. They take it to the State House yard and suspend it from a gibbet-shaped water pipe frame. Special Detective E.B. Craddock and Officer Foster cut it down and bring it to Foster’s stable behind the Phenix Hotel.
April 1, 1830: Meeting on Fast Day at Concord’s Old North Church, leading citizens resolve to form the city’s first temperance society.
April 1, 1861: Charles J. French is born. He will grow up to be mayor of Concord, serving from 1909 to 1915 and again in 1918-19. “He was a remarkably able vote-getter, winning over many strong men who wished to obtain the coveted position as chief executive of the city,” reports the Granite Monthly magazine. French was also an accomplished wrestler and umpire.
April 2, 2001: Concord High is forced to cancel its first tennis match of the season, and the lacrosse team works out on asphalt at the Everett Arena parking lot. The reason? All the March snow hasn’t melted.
April 2, 1988: In a Gile concert attended by about 700 people, flutist Jean Pierre Rampal plays Concord’s City Auditorium. He tells a reporter that he likes to consider the flute not an instrument but an extension of himself. When he plays well, he says, it is as though he has played no instrument at all.
April 2, 1851: Concord’s town meeting votes to end the tolling of bells at funerals. The practice, the resolution says, “is productive of no good, and may, in case of the illness of the living, result in evil.”
April 2, 1835: A second temperance society is formed in Concord. It calls itself the Concord Total Abstinence Society and will attract mainly middle-aged men. The city’s Temperance Society already has 262 members, including 92 women.
April 2, 2000: With the state’s judicial community abuzz over the attorney general’s allegations of misconduct at the Supreme Court, Chief Justice David Brock lets it be known he will issue a response tomorrow. Associate Justice Sherman Horton, who has called the allegations overblown, says he’ll be at Brock’s side but has no idea what the chief justice will say. “You and I are going to find out at the same time,” Horton says.
April 3, 2002: A 15-year-old female student at Concord High School says two male students sexually molested her last October after school in the bathroom and on the campus lawn, the Monitor reports. The girl’s mother is suing the district for negligence.
April 3, 1945: Word reaches Concord that Staff Sgt. F. Hamilton Kibbee was killed on Jan. 31 while a prisoner of war in Germany. His wife Mary, who lives on South Street, last heard from him Jan. 7. The Kibbees have two children, ages 4 and 21 months.
April 3, 1909: In perhaps the first full-page automobile ad in the Monitor, Concord dealer Fred Johnson describes in detail the new Buick “Model 17 Touring Car.” It has five seats, two in front, three in back, a steering wheel rather than a tiller, four cylinders and 30 horsepower. A cloth folding top for rainy days is optional. The price: $1,750. It is the first decade of the popularization of the automobile. In 1900, there were 50 cars registered in New Hampshire. By 1910, there will be 3,500.
April 3, 1865: Concord’s church bells ring and a cannon fires in response to news of the overwhelming defeat of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army at Petersburg, Va.
April 3, 1905: Douglas Everett is born. Everett will become a member of the 1932 U.S. Olympic hockey team, win a silver medal and be inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. The Everett Arena in Concord will be named in his honor.
April 3, 1994: Pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals on Opening Day, Concord’s Bob Tewksbury defeats the Cincinnati Reds. The highlight is Tewksbury’s two-run double over the head of Reds center fielder Roberto Kelly.
April 3, 2000: In response to allegations of misconduct from the attorney general, Chief Justice David Brock vows not to resign from the state Supreme Court. Calling the charges politically motivated, he insists that no offer from the governor’s office will get him to back down. “Gov. Shaheen,” Brock says, “my integrity and the office of the chief justice are not for sale.”
April 4, 2003: Two weeks into spring, the greater Concord area wakes up to 6.4 inches of snow and promises of more to come.
April 4, 1983: Concord City Clerk Marjorie Foote retires after 19 years on the job. “I knew just about everything that was going on with people in this city,” she recalls.
April 5, 2002: Charles Gravenhorst, a self-described pastor who hosts a late-night Christian show on Concord Community TV, is arrested on charges related to an alleged sexual assault in Maine.
April 6, 1853: City government is established in Concord.
April 6, 1968: In its editorial on the assassination two days earlier of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Monitor says: “An America perplexed by the multiplicity of its problems as it prepares for a national election and seeks to extricate itself from a stalemated war has been violently reminded of its internal human stresses and strains.”
April 6, 1993: For the first time, Concord’s Bob Tewksbury gets an opening day start, pitching for St. Louis at San Francisco. He loses but will soon be on track to a 17-win season.
