Jan. 19, 1942: Sylvia Esty, an 8-year-old Jehovah’s Witness, puts her hand over her heart but refuses to say the words of the Pledge of Allegiance at the Garrison School in West Concord. She says God has forbidden her to pledge allegiance to flag and country. Concord’s school board says it may have to expel her.
Jan. 19, 2001: The state Supreme Court rejects a lawsuit that has delayed the construction of an addition at John Stark Regional High School. The school district isn’t quite in the clear, however, because additional legal challenges are forthcoming.
Jan. 20, 1798: Concord’s first accidental fire is recorded at 10 p.m. in David George’s hat shop on North Main Street. “Let this, fellow citizens, excite everyone to vigilance,” writes the Concord Mirrour. “Query – would it not be a good plan for every man to keep a good ladder and one or two proper fire buckets always ready?”
Jan. 20, 1823: Rebecca Long, 36, dies in Concord. The cause: poisoning by white lead, accidentally mixed in the sugar used by the family.
Jan. 20, 1973: The Monitor reports on downtown progress: “Storrs Street, long planned as a bypass to Main Street traffic congestion, will probably have a traffic light of its own soon.”
Jan. 21, 1766: At Concord’s first legal town meeting, Lt. Richard Hasseltine is elected moderator. Among the other elected town officials are tythingmen, a sealer of leather and a scaler of lumber.
Jan. 21, 1857: A choral concert celebrates the opening of the new city hall and county building on the site of the current Merrimack County courthouse.
Jan. 21, 1990: The new Concord Monitor building is dedicated off Sewalls Falls Road. In April, the staff will move into the building. The paper and predecessors to which it can trace its roots have been published in downtown Concord since 1808.
Jan. 22, 1811: A cow belonging to Abner Farnum Jr. of Concord gives birth to a two-headed calf.
Jan. 22, 1942: The Monitor reports that rather than wait for the draft, 32 men have enlisted at the Concord recruiting office for the duration of the war. Eleven are from Concord. Most have signed up for the air corps and been sent to Missouri to train.
Jan. 22, 2001: The Concord School Board names Chris Rath the superintendent of the city’s schools. A former principal at Rundlett Junior High School and Concord High School, Rath has held the post of interim superintendent for several months.
Jan. 23, 1924: Carl Sandburg appears at the Concord City Auditorium. He reads his poems, plays his guitar and sings ballads and songs. According to the Monitor, Sandburg calls modern poetry “free” since it is “not marked off into measures and cadences.” He also remarks on the ships and railroads of the modern world, saying that because “the earth today is belted with steel, there is much an interweaving of cultures as has never before been known. Acceleration, the chaos of life today, is reflected in the poetry.”
Jan. 23, 2000: Concord’s Tara Mounsey is named one of two defensemen on the Hockey News All-World Team of the 1990s. Mounsey’s Olympic teammate Cammi Granato is the other American in the starting six; they are joined by three Canadians and a Finn.
Jan. 24, 1857: The mercury drops to 37 below zero in Concord.
Jan. 24, 1901: Wilbur Sweatt, 22, of Penacook, is accidentally stabbed in the chest by his friend, Fred Carr, while playing with a knife. Sweatt dies Feb. 6, and an autopsy will show that the knife pierced the lung and cut a half inch into his heart. It was considered a wonderful case that he could have lived so long with such a wound, a local history reports.
Jan. 24, 2002: The Concord Police Department announces that George Pregent of Concord has been arrested and charged with four felony-level counts of possession with intent to distribute marijuana. The police found 78 pounds of the drug, the largest recovery of marijuana in the department’s history.
Jan. 25, 2000: Concord receives nearly nine inches of snow, hardly an extraordinary occurrence for late January; however, it is the first significant snowstorm of the season, and for that to come in late January is unusual.
Jan. 25, 2003: At the state Democratic Party’s annual convention in Concord, both U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt and former Vermont governor Howard Dean promise to do away with tax cuts for the wealthy, provide universal health insurance and fight terrorism through energy policy. They rouse the crowd with a vow to make the world safe for liberals again.
