Sept. 27, 1967: New England College bestows honorary degrees on Dudley W. Orr, a prominent Concord lawyer, and writer and humorist Ogden Nash.
Sept. 27, 2000: Dropping in on a rally for Gov. Jeanne Shaheen staged by voters with disabilities, her opponent, Gordon Humphrey, gets an earful for his 1990 vote against the Americans with Disabilities Act. By the end of the news conference, Humphrey commits to a day of touring Concord sites that aren't accessible to people with wheelchairs.
Sept. 27, 2002: Democratic strategist James Carville speaks at a fund-raising dinner for the New Hampshire Democratic Party at the Bektash Shriners' Temple in Concord.
Sept. 28, 1818: Two years after their engagement, Samuel F.B. Morse and Lucretia Walker are married in Concord. In need of income, he has laid aside his itinerant painting career and embraced mechanics, inventing an improved fire engine which the town purchases for $200. Alas, the marriage is ill-starred. Lucretia Walker Morse will die in 1825.
Sept. 28, 1929: Susan McLane is born. She will serve as state senator from Concord after also representing the city in the House. She will run unsuccessfully for Congress, just losing out in a primary to Judd Gregg.
Sept. 28, 2001: The New Hampshire Air National Guard announces that 47 people have been deployed as part of the country's military buildup. Also, Gov. Jeanne Shaheen announces that up to 44 members of the Guard's 157th Security Forces Squadron may be called to active duty at any time.
Sept. 29, 1954: Vice President Richard Nixon warns a crowd of 900 state Republicans at Concord's City Auditorium that Sen. Styles Bridges “is one of those targets chosen by left-wing groups” in the coming election. Opinions may differ over a move in Congress to censure Sen. Joseph McCarthy, he says, but there is “no difference of opinion” in the Eisenhower administration's objective to destroy communism.
Sept. 29, 1965: New Hampshire Attorney General William Maynard advises the state barbers licensing board that the operation of “a mobile barbershop which would be driven from town to town or around a city conducting the business of barbering” would be illegal. After all, he reasons, how would health inspectors perform mandatory spot inspections? A month later, he will use the same logic to kill plans for a ladies' “beauty shop on wheels.”
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. 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.
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.
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, 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. 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, 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. 3, 1991: Ken Johnson of Bow, incarcerated for nearly two years awaiting trial on charges he ordered his pregnant wife killed, is released.
