April 19, 1865: On the day of President Lincoln’s funeral in Washington, Civil War veterans, in a procession with a band, march to services at Concord churches.
April 19, 1976: New England’s biggest April heat wave of the 20th century reaches its crescendo, and the temperature in Concord hits 95 degrees. It’s the third day in a row with a temperature of 90 or above and the fourth day in a row above 80.
April 19, 2003: Concord’s Dewey School will close in 2004-05, the Monitor reports. The students who attend the school’s kindergarten and first-grade classes will go to Kimball School, a few blocks away.
April 20, 1775: Concord’s Rev. Timothy Walker says to a neighbor: “We must fight, John, we must fight. There is no longer any alternative.” Capt. Andrew McClary, meanwhile, leads 34 men on the 70-mile march to Cambridge, Mass., to oppose the British. By the end of the month, more than 2,000 New Hampshire Minutemen will be fighting under Col. John Stark.
April 20, 1945: Rumford Press officials announce that the company will double the size of its Concord operation. The building addition will cost $500,000.
April 20, 1965: Concord police Chief Walter Carlson reports that the city’s population is up by 219 adults and 20 minors over 1964. The report also reveals there are 62 more dogs in the city this year than last.
April 21, 1861: Capt. Edward E. Sturtevant, Concord’s night constable and now the state’s first volunteer for service in the Union army, marches a squad of volunteers into South Congregational Church for Sunday services.
April 21, 1881: At 6 p.m., a small closed car drawn by a horse leaves Abbot & Downing shops for Fosterville. The ride ushers in the era of trolleys in Concord. The cars, made by Abbot & Downing, will carry 200,000 people in their first year of operation.
April 22, 1861: Meeting at the South Congregational Church, a group of Concord women organizes an effort to supply soldiers with “articles necessary to their comfort in the field.” They have raised $200 and resolve to spend $150 on flannel for shirts for the First New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
April 23, 1843: Convinced that the end of the world is near, a considerable number of people in Concord and elsewhere neglect all worldly business and give themselves up to prayer. A few become insane, some destitute.
April 23, 1945: Thirteen-year-old Larry West of Concord is killed with a 12-gauge shotgun. The weapon discharges accidentally while he is climbing a tree to shoot a porcupine.
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 division will also be the first Allied force to enter Belgium.
April 25, 1902: The statue of Commodore George H. Perkins of Hopkinton is dedicated behind the State House. Perkins was a Civil War naval officer who helped Admiral David Farragut take New Orleans and win the Battle of Mobile Bay. As the tablet on the statue records, Farragut called Perkins “the bravest man that ever trod the deck of a ship.”
April 25, 1975: President Ford visits the state and is greeted at Concord airport and introduced to the Legislature by Gov. Meldrim Thomson. Thomson, however, has let it be known that he’s promoting a challenge to Ford in the presidential primary from former California governor Ronald Reagan – and, failing that, Thomson plans to run himself.
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.
