April 15, 2003: The state approves plans for a new children’s center, a parking lot and 10 acres of new ski trails at the Mount Sunapee Ski Resort.
April 15, 2000: The upcoming hearings into allegations of misconduct by the state’s top jurist will be one of the first major tests for many of the members of the House Judiciary Committee, the Monitor reports. Nine of the 22 members who will be investigating state Supreme Court Chief Justice David Brock are in their first terms in the House. Four others are in their second.
April 15, 1861: Three days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the first call for troops reaches Concord by telegraph from Washington, D.C., at 8 a.m. Friends rush across to the Phenix Hotel to awaken Edward E. Sturtevant, a popular police officer and former printer. Sturtevant rushes to the State House and, fulfilling his fondest wish, becomes New Hampshire’s first Civil War volunteer.
April 15, 1928: Augusta Pillsbury of Manchester makes history, becoming the first legislator in the nation to have a baby while in office.
April 15, 1725: Captain John Lovewell, who three months earlier collected 1,000 pounds for the scalps of 10 Indians he caught sleeping at Province Lake, leads an excursion of 46 men on a hunt for more. They will meet and fight a band of Pequawkets under Chief Paugus. The Indians will kill Lovewell, and only 11 members of his party will make it back to their base in Nashua.
April 15, 1987: Pete du Pont, the governor of Delaware, brings his presidential campaign to Keene. With no local organization, he spends the day by himself looking for voters to chat with. “Missing, however, was any attempt to make real connection with someone who might carry on his campaign locally in his absence. … Du Pont was observing some of New Hampshire’s primary rituals but without comprehending their purpose,” writes Dayton Duncan in a campaignhistory.
April 15, 1865: At 2 a.m., the telegraph at the Eagle Hotel brings news that President Lincoln has been shot. At 7:22 a.m., Lincoln dies in Washington. Word spreads quickly in Concord, and crowds gather in the streets. At 9 p.m. many drift to former president Franklin Pierce’s mansard-roofed home on Main Street near Thorndike Street. A lantern illuminating his face, Pierce expresses his “profound sorrow and regret,” telling the crowd: “My best wishes to you all and for what we ought to hold most dear – our country – our whole country.”
April 16, 1865: Capt. Edwin Bedee of the 12th New Hampshire Regiment is arrested on suspicion of absconding with the papers President Lincoln had with him when he was shot at Ford’s Theater two nights before. Mary Lincoln gave Bedee the papers for safekeeping after Bedee, who had attended the play, helped a surgeon locate the president’s mortal wound. After two days, Bedee, of Meredith, will be exonerated when it is learned that, after helping to carry Lincoln across the street to his deathbed, he gave the papers to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.
April 16, 1623: David Thomson, who has sailed with a small group aboard the Jonathan from Plymouth, England, lands at Odiorne’s Point in Rye. He will establish the first permanent white settlement within New Hampshire’s boundaries.
April 17, 1882: President Chester Arthur appoints William E. Chandler, a prominent Republican politician, lawyer and journalist from Concord, secretary of the navy.
April 17, 2000: State prison inmates are paying particular attention to the crisis at the New Hampshire Supreme Court. One inmate says he has spoken to at least 20 others who are closely monitoring news of the court’s supposed wrongdoing, hopeful that an examination of court practices will help set them free.
April 17, 1885: Thomas Samon, who killed a woman in Laconia, stuffed her body in a trunk and wheeled it away, is the first man executed at the new state prison. A prison historian describes Samon as a dull man who spoke with a nasal tone and had one blue eye and one brown eye.
April 17, 1971: Two months after his trip to the moon, it is Alan Shepard Day in New Hampshire. The astronaut, originally from Derry, shares in a $5-a-plate lunch of ham in pineapple sauce at the Concord Country Club. He has no plans to enter politics. “I’m a pilot and an engineer, and I think I’ll stick to what I know about,” he says. Of the moon, he says: “It’s desolate, it’s quiet, it’s stark. … There are no birch trees up there.”
April 17, 1968: Speaking in Manchester, Dr. Timothy Leary, the country’s No. 1 proponent of LSD, steers clear of the subject on the advice of his lawyers. He is under indictment on drug charges. Instead Leary talks about the generation gap, criticizing DeGaulle, Mao, J. Edgar Hoover and William Loeb as “old men lumbering into a new age with old concepts.”
April 17, 1945: Endorsing Concord Mayor Charles McKee’s request, the ministers’ council agrees that all church bells will toll at the hour of victory in Europe. The council’s president, the aptly named Rev. Ernest Shepherd, makes the announcement.
April 18, 2003: After almost two months of negotiation Ken Epworth agrees to sell the Rolfe Barn to the Penacook Historical Society. The deal means that the city will drop its bid to seize the barn through eminent domain.
April 18, 1861: During a week of cries for non-partisanship and a rush to volunteer for military service, the Independent Democrat of Concord reports: “Concord is full of the war spirit.”
April 18, 1989: For the first time, the New Hampshire Senate passes legislation to rid the state of three 19th century anti-abortion laws. The bill will be vetoed by Gov. Judd Gregg. Eight years later, it will be signed by Gov. Jeanne Shaheen.
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, 1861: Luther Ladd of Alexandria dies, the first New Hampshire man killed in the Civil War.
April 19, 1774: Barnstead town meeting voters agree to spend $100 to repair roads and 6 shillings for each of the selectmen.
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 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, 1861: Former president Franklin Pierce, a Democrat and opponent of the Lincoln administration, speaks at the Eagle Hotel on the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. If civil war comes, Pierce declares, all people of the North must stand together. He closes with these words: “I would not live in a state the right and honor of which I was not prepared to defend at all hazards and at all extremities.”
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.” Captain 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, 1861: Balloonist Thaddeus S.C. Lowe of New Hampshire takes off from Cincinnati in a trial run for an attempt to cross the Atlantic. Friends have encouraged him to see how far he can go over land before attempting the ocean crossing. Nine hours after takeoff, Lowe lands in South Carolina.
April 21, 1789: When John Adams arrives at Federal Hall in New York after being elected the nation’s first vice president, he is greeted by John Langdon of New Hampshire, president pro tempore of the Senate. There is as yet no oath of office for the vice president, so Langdon simply escorts Adams to his seat at the head of the chamber.
