Aug. 23, 2002: With the new school year only one week away, six Barnstead upperclassmen do not have high school assignments, the Monitor reports. School officials at Kingswood, Merrimack Valley and Pittsfield, which together took more than 50 of the almost 70 Barnstead eighth-graders placed by June, said they are still struggling to register late-comers in their own districts.
Aug. 24, 2002: A dog that roamed Tilton for two weeks since bolting from a highway crash on Interstate 93 is caught and returned to her owner, Randolph Carford, of Norwalk, Conn. Nyshka, a 4-year-old Australian shepherd, is found by Tilton police officer William Patten, Melisssa Dudley of Canterbury and Lorden Butman of Concord in an animal trap set by the police behind Wal-Mart. Dog and owner are reunited at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where Carford is recovering from injuries sustained in the crash.
Aug. 25, 1855: Concord establishes its first public library. The city council appropriates $1,500: “$300 for fixtures, the residue for books.”
Aug. 25, 2003: A front-page story in the Wall Street Journal details the lavish compensation packages bestowed upon the rector and vice rector of St. Paul’s school in Concord. According to the Journal, Bishop Craig Anderson, the school’s rector, made $524,000 in salary, benefits and deferred compensation last year – more than most college presidents, and vice rector Sharon Hennessy earned $316,400 in total compensation. Some alumni, parents and donors, outraged at Anderson’s salary, campaign for his ouster. They also push for new faces on the 24-member board of trustees, which sets his pay.
Aug. 26, 1988: Developers abandon plans for a seven-story hotel on Fort Eddy Road. Instead, Concord will get the LL Bean strip mall.
Aug. 26, 2003: The New Hampshire Main Street Center receives a summer gift in the form of a $50,000 donation from the Grappone Companies. The center will use the money to help pay for the technical assistance it gives to its 19 local Main Street communities.
Aug. 27, 1927: At a railroad crossing in Tilton, four young people, including two local girls, are killed just after midnight when an express train strikes the car in which they are riding. Witnesses say the Concord-to-Laconia night flyer struck the car squarely, knocking it into the Woodlawn Inn. The inn’s wall is crushed. The impact of the collision was so great that the cow catcher on the locomotive was “ripped from its hangings.” The victims were thrown free of the car and “horribly mangled,” the Monitor reports. Tilton residents argue that the crossing should be better marked.
Aug. 27, 1990: David Souter’s friends and neighbors describe for the Monitor their interviews with the FBI after he is nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. “They asked me if David had ever been in any trouble with liquor or speeding or any kind of dope. But I never knew David to drink or anything,” said one neighbor.
Aug. 27, 1991: Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder arrives in Concord and plays coy about plans to run for president. “I’m not unmindful at all of all the portents, the omens and the signs relative to being in New Hampshire. I take all of them seriously.” Wilder will eventually jump into the race but then back out.
Aug. 28, 1988: New Hampshire Republican Sen. Gordon Humphrey and Rep. Bob Smith ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review last year’s $12,100 congressional pay raise. A 1985 law allows a presidential recommendation for a pay raise to take effect within 30 days unless both houses of Congress reject it. In 1987, Congress rejected the 16 percent raise – one day after the 30-day deadline.
Aug. 29, 1862: While ministering to soldiers of the 2nd New Hampshire Infantry at Second Bull Run, Harriet P. Dame of Concord is captured. She is taken to Stonewall Jackson’s headquarters and will be released the next day. As long as the 2nd serves, Dame will be its “angel of mercy,” according to Maj. J.D. Cooper. “Many days,” he will write, “she has stood by the side of our noble, patriotic sons who have gone to their long homes, doing all in her power to alleviate their sufferings, and soothe their sorrows in the dying hour.”
