Jan. 17, 1942: Concord’s zoning board unanimously approves the Brezner Tannery’s takeover of an abandoned mill in Penacook. The tannery will open later in the year, creating 200 jobs.
Jan. 17, 1948: Concord’s new mayor, Charles McKee, says he’s not giving up on plans for a new man-made lake on the Turkey River, despite voter opposition. “As I understand it, there was a lake there once, but someone pulled out the plug and it drained away. I am told it would be a comparatively simple matter to put the plug back in.”
Jan. 18, 1982: New Hampshire is rattled by the worst earthquake in 42 years. In Concord, a city council meeting has just gotten under way. As Mayor David Coeyman gavels the meeting to order, the windows begin shaking and papers begin shuffling. “I will always remember this,” Coeyman says.
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. 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, 1994: A three-alarm fire damages the Boutwell & Hussey-Wiren Funeral Home on North Main Street, a building that dates to the late 19th century. “I’d like to send a message out that we do plan to go on,” says Ronald Bourque, whose family has owned the business for 20 years.
Jan. 20, 1996: Responding to flat tax fever, GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole tells a Concord rally he favors “a flatter tax.”
Jan. 21, 1766: At Concord’s first legal town meeting, Lieutenant 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. 21, 2003: Fire destroys a home on Allen Road in Bow as firefighters struggle to contain the blaze in near-zero-degree temperatures. No one in injured.
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. 22, 2002: In a special election in Penacook held to fill the city council and state representative seats left vacant by Dave Poulin, who died suddenly two months previously, Liz Blanchard reels in more than four times as many as her opponent, Myril Cox, and becomes the new Ward 1 city councilor.
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, 1938: The Sacred Heart Hockey Club, composed mostly of young Concord men of French Canadian descent, plays Butterfield of Quebec at the White Park rink. A crowd of 1,167 pays the 15-cent price of admission.
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. 23, 2003: Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, after a visit to Pleasant View Retirement center in Concord, accuses his Democratic presidential primary opponents of trying to run against the very Republican policies they’d supported in Congress. “I think our party is suffering because we keep nominating people who will say anything they have to say to get elected,” he says.
