Aug. 2, 1927 – Granite cutters from Concord join others from throughout New England in appealing for a five-day week with a $9-a-day wage. They currently work 5½ days a week at $8 per day.
Aug. 2, 1830 – The Rev. Roger C. Hatch rides from Hopkinton to Concord to make the first deposit in the New Hampshire Savings Bank. The amount is $100. The bank's quarters at 214 North Main Street are now the offices of the Gallagher, Callahan and Gartrell law firm.
Aug. 3, 1871 – Brothers George and Charles Page organize the Page Belting Co. after buying a large tannery on Commercial Street near Horse Shoe Pond in Concord. Their father Moses, an innovator in the leather industry, has operated tanneries in Franklin, Chichester and Manchester. The sons will display their belting at the 1876 Centennial exposition in Philadelphia and the 1893 Columbian exposition in Chicago.
Aug. 3, 1967 – To the shouts and jeers of Mayor J. Herbert Quinn's supporters, Concord's Board of Alderman votes 13-1 to impeach the mayor. Quinn's main offense: an attempt to engineer the arrest of Monitor Editor James M. Langley on a drunken driving charge. Quinn will appeal his dismissal in the courts, but ultimately his ouster will stand and Concord will revert to a weak-mayor, council-manager form of government.
Aug. 4, 1862 – Gen. Oliver O. Howard of Maine and Col. Edward E. Cross of Lancaster, both wounded at the recent Battle of Fair Oaks, are among the speakers at a war recruiting meeting in Concord. The Patriot will report that the speeches were “able and eloquent” with the exception of Howard's approving mention of “negro projects,” a reference to the plan to allow black men to serve in the Union Army.
Aug. 4, 1926 – It is announced in Concord that Allen Hollis, a local lawyer and civic leader known as “The Kingfish,” will donate 11.9 acres on South Fruit Street and $5,000 toward a football field and other athletic facilities. The land will become Memorial Field.
Aug. 4, 1965 – Concord begins celebrating its bicentennial with neighborhood fairs, a Bicentennial Queen pageant, badminton, water polo and tugs of war.
Aug. 5, 1861 – New Hampshire's First Regiment, its three months' enlistment up, returns to Concord without having fought a battle. Gov. Nathaniel Berry, the Governor's Horse Guard and a large crowd of citizens greet the regiment and accompany it to the State House. There, the soldiers stack arms. Many will volunteer for service in the three-year regiments now forming.
Aug. 5, 1976 – The Monitor reports that Gov. Mel Thomson is doling out special wallet-sized cards that describe the bearer as a “personal friend” of the governor and say Thomson would “greatly appreciate any courtesy you may extend.” Thomson's son and campaign manager, Peter Thomson, denies that anyone showing a card to a state official would receive special treatment. “They can't fix a traffic ticket,” he says.
Aug. 6, 1728 – A grant creates the Plantation of Suncook (an Indian term meaning “place of the goose” or “rocky place”). Massachusetts grants the land to the 47 soldiers and survivors of an Indian-hunting expedition to the north known as Lovewell's War. Francis Doyen of Penacook, one of Lovewell's soldiers, is believed to have been the first white settler.
Aug. 6, 1854 – When President Franklin Pierce declines a besotted South Carolinian's invitation to have a drink with him, the man berates the president and throws a hard-boiled egg at him. Pierce has the man arrested.
Aug. 8, 1974 – As news of the impending resignation of President Nixon sweeps the nation, the Monitor interviews people in the streets of Concord. “I feel a tremendous sense of renewal for the American system,” St. Paul's School English teacher Richard Lederer tells a reporter. The president announces his resignation in a televised speech, and Vice President Gerald Ford assumes the presidency.
Aug. 8, 1861 – The Democratic Standard, a Concord newspaper with Southern sympathies, refers to the Union Army as “Old Abe's Mob.” When angry returned soldiers from the First New Hampshire Volunteers gather outside the Standard office, the paper's frightened proprietors stand in the windows, pistols in hand. The owners fire three shots in the melee that follows, but no one is injured. The mob burns some of the Standard's property and dumps its type cases in the street.
