Dec. 10, 1883: Nervous customers make a run on the China Savings Bank of Suncook. “The bank had heretofore borne a reputation of soundness, but of late there has been some acknowledged mistakes in the management of the institution,” the Weekly Union of Manchester reports. The presence of state bank commissioners makes depositors nervous, and by 10 a.m. 200 are waiting in line, demanding their savings in full. “Their deposits range from small sums up to $2,000. The total deposits of the bank aggregate nearly $200,000,” the Union reports.
Dec. 11, 1979: Public Service Co. of New Hampshire will be insolvent by mid-January unless it gets an emergency 5.5 percent rate increase, its chief counsel, Martin Gross, tells the state Public Utilities Commission. The company, Gross says, has severe cash problems both long and short term.
Dec. 11, 1999: Two Catholic priests whose recent marriages disqualify them from clerical service in the Roman Catholic Church become Episcopal priests in a liturgy at St. Paul’s Church in Concord. The service marks one of the first such clerical conversions in the state’s religious history.
Dec. 11, 1848: New Hampshire artist Benjamin Champney’s “Panorama of the Rhine” is exhibited publicly for the first time in Boston. Of the press and critics who come to see it, one reviewer writes: “They came – They saw – He conquered.” Yet even after dropping the admission price to 25 cents, Champney will barely cover the cost of renting the hall.
Dec. 12, 2003: The Monitor reports that the state is running low on flu vaccine. With stories of children dying from the flu coming out of Colorado and Massachusetts, area residents have jammed clinics and swamped doctors’ offices, hospitals and organizations like the VNA with frantic phone calls hoping to get vaccines for themselves and their children.
Dec. 12, 1946: William Loeb writes his first front-page editorial in the Union Leader.
Dec. 13, 1883: A drummer has filed suit against a Dover landlord “for calling him before he wished to rise.” the Weekly Union of Manchester reports.
Dec. 13, 1774: Paul Revere gallops into Portsmouth to urge dissidents there to guard their arms and gunpowder because of Parliament’s recently passed ban on the export of munitions to the American colonies. His warning leads to a false rumor that British troops are marching north to guard the arsenal in Fort William and Mary in Portsmouth Harbor.
Dec. 13, 1776: The Continental Congress authorizes the building of 13 warships to combat the British. John Langdon, member of Congress and a Portsmouth merchant, is appointed to oversee the construction of one of them, a 32-gun frigate to be built at Portsmouth. It will be called the Raleigh.
Dec. 13, 1863: Major Edward E. Sturtevant of Concord, a member of the Fifth New Hampshire Infantry and the state’s first Civil War volunteer, is killed leading his regiment in a suicidal assault during the Battle of Fredericksburg. His body is not found. His men assume it is one of many stripped and buried on the field.
Dec. 14, 1774: A crowd of 400, led by Thomas Pickering, a sea captain, and John Langdon, a merchant, gathers in downtown Portsmouth in response to British strong-arm tactics, including a ban on the importation of guns and powder. The crowd ignores the royal governor’s efforts to disperse it and marches on Fort William and Mary, where the garrison of six British soldiers wisely surrenders. The crowd hauls down the British colors and carries off 100 barrels of gun powder, some of which will be used in the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Dec. 15, 1836: The Legislature votes to accept an $892,115 grant from Washington – but only after chiding the federal government for “degrading the states and reducing them to servile dependence.” The money will be divvied up among the towns.
