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, 1992: The Concord Monitor publishes its last afternoon edition. Henceforth it will be a morning paper.
April 25, 1893: Edward H. Brooks is born in Concord. A graduate of Concord High and Norwich University, he will serve in both world wars, rising to the rank of lieutenant general. A highlight of his long, distinguished career will be leading the Second Armored Division onto Omaha Beach. His pision will also be the first Allied force to enter Belgium.
April 25, 1996: A packed house comes to the City Auditorium to hear five poets read in honor of Jane Kenyon, who was New Hampshire's poet laureate when she died a year earlier. Among the readers are two Pulitzer Prize winners – Maxine Kumin and Charles Simic – and Kenyon's widower, Donald Hall.
April 25, 2002: The Concord Fire Department's new ladder truck, which caused hullabaloo among city councilors, fire administrators, fire union members and mayoral candidates last summer and fall, has arrived, the Monitor reports. The $688,000 truck is called a “tower ladder” because there's a platform, or bucket, at the top capable of holding up to three people.
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 26, 2001: Bancroft Products, a Concord nonprofit known for hiring refugees and people with disabilities, has laid off 260 employees, the Monitor reports. Just six months ago, when the economic outlook was rosier, the company had been planning to add some 130 jobs.
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, 2003: At the Concord Community Music School, Dana Gioia, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, tells art leaders from across the state that he is ready to rebuild and revitalize the endowment. “The arts are one of the primary and primal ways of knowing the world,” he said. “They tend to embrace and enhance. . . not only building your humanity but building your empathy.”
April 28, 1974: Gov. Mel Thomson returns to New Hampshire after two days in the Caribbean studying oil refineries. Thomson's office refuses to say precisely where in the Caribbean area he was.
April 28, 2001: A Concord doctor has been charged with sexually assaulting a patient in her bed at the state's psychiatric hospital, the Monitor reports. The doctor is also accused of giving the patient addictive drug prescriptions in exchange for sex.
April 29, 1964: In an editorial, the Monitor defends its opposition to the recently initiated state lottery against criticism from Manchester publisher William Loeb. The Monitor calls the lottery “a new venture born under a cloud of doubts.” Loeb has accused the Monitor of being “a minority gone mad and demanding what it wants.” The paper, he writes, is guilty of “vindictive dog-in-the-manger tactics and sabotage.”
April 30, 1697: In Penacook along the Merrimack River, Hannah Dustin and two other captives turn on the Indians who kidnapped them and killed Dustin's newborn child in March. They catch all the Indians asleep, kill 10 of them and return home to Haverhill, Mass. For the 10 scalps they bring with them, they collect a bounty of 50 pounds.
April 30, 2000: Tito Santana and other professional wrestlers perform at Bishop Brady High School in a charity event in memory of slain Epsom police officer Jeremy Charron. The proceeds go to a new scholarship fund, and Concord Mayor Bill Veroneau presents the Charron family with a plaque proclaiming the day Jeremy Charron Day.
April 30, 2001: Warren Doane coaches his final baseball game. Concord High's coach since 1973, Doane has been diagnosed with cancer.
