March 5, 1740: After years of disputes over Massachusetts claims on New Hampshire, King George II approves the boundary between the two colonies. The decision increases New Hampshire’s size by 3,500 square miles and costs Massachusetts 28 chartered towns, including Suncook, Bow, Concord, Penacook, Webster, Salisbury, Dunbarton, Weare, Hopkinton, Warner and Bradford.
March 6, 1991: With five seconds left in the state Class I semifinal basketball game, which is tied at 74, Merrimack Valley’s Scott Drapeau miraculously reaches around a Stevens High player to tip in a missed free throw. The MV win sets up a rematch with rival Pembroke Academy and a final showdown between Drapeau and Matt Alosa, two of the biggest basketball stars in area history. Alosa’s Spartans will win the title.
March 6, 2001: A true blizzard sends New Hampshire residents to check the record books. The official tally in Concord is 18.1 inches. That’s a lot for one storm, but it’s considerably short of the 28 inches that fell in December 1969. Other parts of the state (Nottingham is tops with 40 inches) get hit harder.
March 7, 1780: Concord town meeting voters elect a prosecutor to find out who “pulled down the house of Andrew Stone, and see what provision they will make for the support of his wife.” Stone was a soldier from Concord in the Continental Army. Apparently in his absence, a town history reports, “one of Stone’s daughters did not behave so well as the neighbors thought a faire and chaste maiden should do and they undertook to correct her manners by pulling the house down. Whether the girl behaved any better afterwards, tradition saith not.”
March 7, 1798: Crowds converge on Concord, which has grown to 2,000 inhabitants, to celebrate the ordination of the Rev. Asa McFarland, third minister of the village’s Congregational Church. The church is state-sanctioned and tax-supported. Accepting the call, the 28-year-old McFarland tells townspeople he has prayed that God will make him “an instrument to promote your spiritual happiness.” A grand ball at Stickney’s Tavern, on Main Street just up from the ferry crossing, celebrates the event.
March 7, 1825: A team of horses crossing the frozen Merrimack in Concord falls through the ice.
March 8, 1973: Gov. Mel Thomson makes a surprise visit to the state hospital kitchen and declares that the patients are being fed “poorly and revoltingly.” He orders samples of the food to be brought to the State House to be viewed by legislators and reporters.
March 8, 1987: Ray Barham’s first column appears in the Concord Monitor. Barham is serving life without parole at New Hampshire State Prison for a 1981 murder.
March 8, 2001: Carolyn Bradley, principal of Concord’s Rundlett Middle School, announces she will resign at the end of the school year. Bradley has earned praise for her work in Concord and elsewhere in the state, but some will most remember her collection of eyeglasses: 13 pairs, a shade to match every suit.
March 9, 1812: Town meeting voters in Concord declare “that no swine be allowed to run at large on the road from Concord bridge to Boscawen bridge under a penalty to the owner of 25 cents for each offense.”
March 9, 1943: A winter for the ages continues as the temperature in Concord falls to 16 below zero. Just three weeks earlier, the city suffered through its coldest day ever recorded, when the mercury fell to 37 below.
March 10, 1853: The town of Concord holds its last town meeting – and then votes to become a city by a vote of 828-559.
March 10, 1978: The Executive Council approves 32-year-old Tom Rath of Concord to succeed David Souter as attorney general. Souter, 38, who held the job for seven years, is approved as a superior court judge. Gov. Meldrim Thomson Jr. made the nominations. Rath’s salary will be $33,500 a year.
March 10, 2000: A 7-year-old boy crossing Loudon Road on his way to Concord’s Dame School is struck by a pickup truck and seriously injured. The accident inspires residents of the Heights to press city officials for better traffic signals and more clearly marked crosswalks.
March 11, 1734: Its right to self-government recognized seven years after the first white settlers arrive, Rumford in Essex County, Mass., convenes its first town meeting at 2 p.m. In time the town will be known as Concord, N.H.
March 11, 2000: After 15 months of negotiations, the Concord teachers’ union and school board have a tentative agreement on a new contract, the Monitor reports.
