Sept. 7, 1791: A constitutional convention is called to order in Concord. In 36 days in session, it will propose the creation of the Executive Council, the sizes of the bicameral legislature and a change in the name of the state’s top elected official from “president” to “governor.” Voters will approve these changes in 1792.
Sept. 7, 1929: Patrick Griffiths of 10½ Walker St. in Concord pedals to a stop in the State House plaza at 12:03 a.m. with a new endurance record for continuous bicycling. His time of 65 hours, 33 minutes breaks the record by 33 minutes. Motorists surrounding the State House plaza honk their horns in tribute to the new mark.
Sept. 7, 1892: The poet John Greenleaf Whittier dies in a room overlooking the rose garden in his summer home at Hampton Falls. Among his many poems with New Hampshire themes was “How the Women Went from Dover,” on the flogging of three Quaker women in 1662.
Sept 8, 1774: At Portsmouth, an angry mob stones the house of Edward Parry, the tea agent, after learning that, in violation of their boycott, he has allowed the unloading of 30 chests of tea from the mast ship Fox.
Sept. 8, 1679: New Hampshire is declared a separate royal colony.
Sept. 9, 2000: Concord is about to get its own baseball team, the New England Collegiate Baseball League announces. Concord will join the wooden-bat summer league next summer, playing its home games at Memorial Field.
Sept. 9, 1919: The Legislature gives women the right to vote.
Sept. 9, 1847: With Mexican War fever at its peak, the Ancient and Honorable Artillery of Boston celebrates its 211th anniversary with a march down Concord’s Main Street.
Sept. 9, 1842: The rail line between Boston and Concord opens. Two years later, it will carry 73,000 passengers and 43,000 tons of freight.
Sept. 10, 2001: A Barnstead police officer who had been suspended without pay is arrested for allegedly destroying paperwork after arresting a drunken driver. The officer a charged with tampering with public records, a misdemeanor.
Sept. 10, 2000: NBC’s The West Wing wins a record-tying eight Emmy Awards, putting the show about a president from New Hampshire in the elite company of ER and Hill Street Blues – the only other series to win so many awards in their first season.
Sept. 11, 2002: Hundreds of people stand silent under umbrellas at the State House Plaza during a Sept. 11 commemoration ceremony.
Sept. 12, 1765: In protest of the Stamp Act, effigies of George Meserve, the royal stamp agent, and Lord Bute, head of the British ministry, are hanged in Portsmouth’s Haymarket Square. In the evening, they are taken down and paraded to the town’s Liberty Pole, where they are burned.
Sept. 12, 1979: The Washington Post reports that William Dunfey, a leading New Hampshire businessman-politician, is about to be named to the U.S. delegation to the UN General Assembly. He will be the third Dunfey brother to receive recognition by President Carter through a prestigious federal job.
Sept. 12, 1977: National Democratic activists meeting in Detroit seek to end the prominence of New Hampshire as the state that holds the first presidential primary. Their failed effort won’t be the last.
Sept. 13, 1913: Harry K. Thaw, a wealthy, prominent New Yorker who murdered one of the country’s foremost architects, Stanford White, arrives in Concord. Thaw was convicted, escaped from prison and was recaptured in Canada. He was brought back across the border and is being held under house arrest at the Eagle Hotel on Main Street. His case will be tangled up in court until December 1914. In the meantime, he will pass the summer of 1914 at a resort in Gorham.
Sept. 13, 1976: Rochester Mayor John Shaw says he will pay a parking ticket given to Gov. Mel Thomson after a local businessman complained the governor’s limousine was illegally parked. Cost of the ticket: 50 cents.
Sept. 13, 1981: William Loeb, publisher of the Union Leader since 1946, dies of cancer at 75.
