July 18, 1817: To a group of leading citizens on the Concord-Chichester line, a cloud of dust announces the approach of President James Monroe. A cheering crowd on Main Street greets Monroe, a lanky 59-year-old man in a formal long dark coat. He will spend three days in the capital, attending dinners, a concert and Sunday services, taking a ride on a new 75-foot boat on the Merrimack and visiting the State House construction site.
July 18, 1818: A gilded, carved wooden eagle is raised to a perch of the State House, which is nearing completion. The event is marked with a parade, toasts and refreshments.
July 19, 1832: Fearing a cholera epidemic that has entered the country from Europe and Canada, a special Concord town meeting elects a board of health. The board is granted power “to make all necessary arrangements and accommodations for sick strangers and for the comfort and safety of its own citizens.” Fears of the cholera epidemic will prove unfounded.
July 19, 1976: A consultant recommends that the state build a new $20 million prison on Clinton Street and phase out the North State Street facility by 1980. City officials are outraged. City Councilor David Rogers suggests the site is Gov. Mel Thomson’s choice because it is “the residential area inhabited by many of his most outspoken critics.” (The plan never comes to fruition.)
July 19, 1985: In a White House ceremony, President George Bush names Christa McAuliffe, a Concord High School social studies teacher, as the nation’s “Teacher in Space.” Scheduled for a January launch on the space shuttle, McAuliffe says: “I think students will . . . say that an ordinary person is contributing to history, and if they can make that connection, they are going to get excited about history and about the future.”
July 20, 1817: President James Monroe attends church at “the Old North,” the Congregational church that stood on the site of what would later be the Walker School.
July 20, 1945: The Carmelite nuns, a cloistered order engaged in meditation, prayer and manual labor, plan a new foundation in Concord. They have acquired a site on Bridge Street and will move to the city from Roxbury, Mass. The order is named after Mount Carmel in Palestine, site of the first church dedicated to the Immaculate Mother of God. The order’s first home in the United States was established in Baltimore in 1790.
July 20, 1987: A traveling exhibit in a trailer stops at the State House, and hundreds of people queue up to see what’s inside. Among many other items, the exhibit includes an original Magna Carta, a signed Emancipation Proclamation, a page of the 1638 Connecticut charter and a late draft of the U.S. Constitution with the notes of one of the delegates, Pierce Butler, in the margins.
July 21, 1873: Meeting at city hall, the Congregationalist society of Concord votes to rebuild its church at North Main and Chapel streets. Three weeks earlier, a fire consumed the church.
July 21, 1878: A lightning bolt ignites the “Mother House,” the first building on the campus of 22-year-old St. Paul’s School. Fire destroys the building, which houses classrooms, the dining hall and the offices of the rector and staff. The Rev. Henry Coit, the school’s first rector, is determined that the fire not delay school. Two months later, school will open on time, with 204 boys enrolled.
July 21, 1892: The Snowshoe Club, one of Concord’s many men’s organizations, is founded. Its objects are “enjoyment of the beauties of nature; moral and social improvement; physical culture.”
July 21, 1939: The Concord Ex-Service Men’s Council petitions the city to rename Concord streets in honor of soldiers killed in World War I.
July 21, 2003: Wayne and Ruth Ross, the owners of Rossview Farm in Concord, have struck a deal with the Trust for Public Land to conserve their 510 acres of forest, wetland and hill on District Five Road, the Monitor reports. Provided they can secure the funding, the Trust for Public Land can buy the land for $2.4 million.
July 22, 1862: A meeting is held in Concord in response to President Lincoln’s call for 300,000 new volunteers throughout the Union states. The city decides it will put up a $50 bounty, in addition to state and federal bounties, for any Concord man who will enlist.
July 22, 1976: New Hampshire Attorney General David Souter discloses that three pistols were uncovered at the state prison in Concord after officials were informed of plans for an armed escape.
July 22, 2003: Manuel Gehring, the Concord man accused of murdering his children, Sarah, 14, and Philip, 11, returns to Concord on a small jet after spending a week somewhere in the Midwest.
July 23, 1927: Col. Charles A. Lindbergh, who is scheduled to arrive in Concord two days from now on his triumphant tour around the country, lands at Concord airport. The reason: the airport in Portland, Maine, his scheduled stop, is fogged in.
July 24, 2001: The Census Bureau reports that the state’s prison population grew by 74 percent in the 1990s.
July 24, 2002: An 11-run second inning and sparkling defense propels Concord National to the Junior League Softball Championship, with a 13-2 victory over the host Bedford team.
July 24, 2003: Manuel Gehring, the Concord man accused of fatally shooting his children, Sarah and Philip, pleads not guilty on two counts of first-degree murder in Hillsborough County Superior Court.
