Dec. 16, 1979: Rachel Adams, wife of former governor Sherman Adams, dies at her home in Lincoln. She was first lady from 1949 to 1953 and joined her husband in Washington when he was assistant to President Dwight Eisenhower from 1953 through 1958. An artist and author, she published an autobiography, “On the Other Hand,” in 1963.
Dec. 16, 1976: Gov. Mel Thomson announces he will have state troopers stationed at border liquor stores to harass out-of-state tax agents who sometimes try to catch consumers from their states buying New Hampshire’s cheap booze. The agents, he says, will be questioned, photographed and asked to produce identification.
Dec. 16, 1773: On the day of the Boston Tea Party, Portsmouth holds a town meeting and passes a resolve designed to prevent the landing of any tea.
Dec. 16, 1971: Gov. Walter Peterson nominates David H. Souter, a 32-year-old assistant attorney general and former Rhodes Scholar from Weare, to be deputy attorney general.
Dec. 16, 1965: A new state report shows public libraries in New Hampshire spend an average of $2.32 per resident. Concord tops the list at $4.06 per resident. Book readership is also up statewide, to 6.71 books per resident per year.
Dec. 17, 2002: Almost two decades after a 6-week-old baby boy died, the police have charged a Georgia man with his murder, the Monitor reports. George B. Knickerbocker, 43, of Bailey Lane in Rossville, Ga., was arrested Sunday on second degree murder charges in the 1983 death of Adam Robbins.
Dec. 17, 1979: New Hampshire’s multi-million dollar ski industry, already plagued by high fuel prices, is getting nervous about the winter. With just five days until the start of Christmas vacation, only six of the state’s 35 ski areas are open. Not only has there been a shortage of natural snow, but warm weather has hindered artificial snowmaking operations. Ski area operators are praying for a heavy snowfall before Christmas to bail them out of a potential financial disaster, the Associated Press reports.
Dec. 17, 2000: A 7-week-old girl dies in an early morning fire at a Pittsfield apartment building. Though seriously injured, the girl’s mother and 23-month-old brother will survive.
Dec. 17, 1951: The temperature in Concord falls to 22 below zero, making this the coldest December day of the 20th century.
Dec. 17, 1999: A coalition of property-rich towns announces it will sue the state over its new method of paying for public education. The lawsuit will argue, among other things, that the state’s tax-assessment system is too primitive to handle a statewide property tax.
Dec. 17, 1828: Ralph Waldo Emerson, who is under serious consideration for the job of assistant pastor to the Second Church in Boston (the Mathers’ church), visits Concord. He and Ellen Tucker, whom he met the previous Christmas, become engaged to marry. He is 25, she 17.
Dec. 17, 1977: Near Reno, Nev., Union Leader publisher William Loeb and his wife Nackey are injured when the car he is driving skids on ice, leaves the road and overturns. Nackey Loeb suffers a spinal injury that paralyzes her from the waist down. Loeb will blame the accident on black ice. “It was one of those cases where we weren’t at fault and the highway people weren’t at fault,” he says.
Dec. 17, 1835: Charles Miner, who supports native New Hampshireman Daniel Webster for president, explains why Webster’s stance on the War of 1812 will hurt him. “Damning Sin! Never to be forgiven,” Miner writes. “He was a Federalist … opposed to the war! Let no statesman or patriot hereafter, dare to interpose his voice to save his Country from the Horrors of War!” Miner’s view will be shared by historians, who say Webster’s antiwar position as a young congressman doomed his presidential ambitions.
Dec. 17, 1808: Three years after a state prison is proposed in Concord, the Legislature authorizes a committee of three to accept bids for building one. It will be nearly four years before the prison opens on North States Street at Tremont Street. It will be a three-story, 36-cell structure surrounded by granite walls three feet thick and 14 feet high. The cost: $37,000.
Dec. 18, 2000: For the first time in anyone’s memory, a crowd gathers at the State House to watch the casting of votes for president by New Hampshire’s four members of the Electoral College. The electors all choose George W. Bush, doing their part to ensure his narrow victory over Al Gore.
Dec. 18, 1805: Russell Freeman, a former speaker of the New Hampshire House, is murdered while serving in a debtor’s jail in Haverhill. His murderer will be defended by Daniel Webster but eventually hanged.
Dec. 18, 1862: Five days after his regiment marched to the slaughter at Fredericksburg, Sergeant George Gove of Raymond writes in his diary: “We have nothing to do now, for the very good reason we can do nothing. The Fifth New Hampshire Regiment is played out.”
Dec. 18, 1995: Concord’s Bob Tewksbury signs a one-year contract with the San Diego Padres for $1.5 million.
Dec. 19, 2002: Appearing before a judge for the first time since their arrests, the Weare police officers accused of gatecrashing at the Hopkinton State Fair last August watch as their lawyer seeks to undermine the case against them. The investigation that led to the arrests of Sgt. James Carney and Officer Hicham Geha was mishandled, attorney Tony Soltani argues in Concord District Court. Soltani also disputes the accuracy of the eyewitness accounts collected by Hopkinton’s investigating officer, Lt. Anthony Shepherd, who is prosecuting the case.
Dec. 19, 2001: In Manchester, nineteen months after a toddler died from lead poisoning in an apartment he managed, James Aneckstein pleads guilty in federal court to failing to notify tenants of lead-paint hazards, and to attempting to hide that violation from investigators and grand jurors. Aneckstein is the first rental property manager in the nation to face criminal prosecution for not providing the federally mandated lead hazard warnings.
Dec. 19, 1774: The British frigate Scarborough arrives at Portsmouth Harbor, the second of two ships whose presence quells an insurrection. In two raids during the week, dissident colonists have taken light cannons, muskets and gunpowder from Fort William and Mary. The presence of the British ships is credited with keeping the dissidents from returning to seize the fort’s 45 heavy cannons.
Dec. 19, 1895: Schoolteachers Robert Frost and Elinor White marry. They will honeymoon the following summer in Allenstown.
Dec. 19, 1975: The state accepts as a gift the historic John Langdon house in Portsmouth, birthplace of an early New Hampshire governor.
Dec. 20, 1774: The Portsmouth Volunteers organize, elect officers and resolve to drill twice weekly. Alarmed, royal Gov. John Wentworth writes to Lord Dartmouth that his minions “are arming and exercising Men, as if for immediate War.”
Dec. 20, 1999: The Franklin School Board votes to ease the district’s dress code for teachers. The rules, adopted one month earlier, originally required male teachers to wear a dress shirt with a tie. The changes allow the teachers to wear a vest or sweater with the dress shirt or a turtleneck under a sweater or sports coat. Female teachers are required to wear skirts, dresses or slacks.
Dec. 20, 1860: South Carolina secedes from the Union. “The earth did not quake, the sun shone on, & Nature did not mark the event with any uncommon convulsion,” New Hampshireman Benjamin Brown French writes in his diary.
Dec. 21, 1862: New Hampshireman Benjamin Brown French, an aide to President Lincoln, writes “The war! I have no heart to write about either it or the political aspect of affairs. Defeat at Fredericksburg – the Cabinet breaking up – our leading men fighting with each other!”
