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Page 22 NEWFOUNDLAKELIFE.COM May 2025 Community
Leading the Force: Danbury’s Trailblazing Police Chief of the ’80s
By DoNNa RhoDes
DANBURY – When Erlon and Phyliss Emerson of Warwick, RI welcomed a baby girl they named Ann Louis into the world on May 28, 1932, they were quite proud of the new member of their family, but never realized then how much of an impact she would have in the world later in her life.
Ann’s adult life overflowed with community service, so, with Mother’s Day looming on the horizon, three of her four children, Margaret, Kathleen, and Harold, gathered together recently to reminisce on what it was like to grow up with a mom
like theirs.
It turns out that when Ann
Emerson-Knott became the first female police chief in New Hampshire, she was also one of only ten women wearing the same badge in the entire country.
When Ann and her husband, John, who was also a police offi- cer, moved to Danbury in 1956, she immediately began giving her time to the community.
Before she entered law en- forcement years later, she and John helped merge three of Danbury’s one-room schools into a modern, central school that would accommodate students in grades 1-8. She even drew up the
original plans for what started off as a three-room school. Ann and John were also instrumental in organizing volunteers to help build the Danbury Elementary School, which was completed in 1961 and remains part of the Newfound Area School District, which now serves children in grades K-5.
Next up for Ann was a pro- posal to combine two separate churches into a single, more practical house of worship for the town. Wanting it to be the “best of the best,” pews and the steeple bell were moved from the High Street church, which was used only in the summer, to the
Chief Ann Emerson-Knott was once not only deeply involved in the community of Danbury, but she was also well-respected as New Hampshire’s first female police chief. Photo Courtesy of Harold Knott
year-round church on Route 104. That building on High Street then became the new Danbury Community Center.
The biggest challenge for this community-minded woman came in the 1970s, however, when the Danbury Police Department was in need of an officer. Hear- ing the call, Ann put aside her volunteerism and housework and enrolled in the N.H. Police Standards and Training Facility in Concord. Upon her successful graduation, she went on to then fill Danbury’s need for another officer.
Four years later, the chief moved on, though so at the March Town Meeting in 1981, she successfully ran for his posi- tion, and history was made.
Chief Ann Knott was well respected by all levels of law en- forcement across the state. She made a name for herself through her excellence in handling mat- ters of domestic and sexual vio- lence, as well as the way she was able to deal with the issue and prevention of teen crime. Chief Knott was also innovative in her means of punishment for young offenders; teens were something she knew a lot about, having a few at home herself.
Her daughter, Margaret (Marg), was 24 by then and was married to a man who was also a police officer for the Town of Andover. Kathleen (Kat) and Harold, however, were just seven and fourteen when their mom graduated from the police acad- emy and remember well what it was like to grow up with a mom in law enforcement.
“Kathy better not” was the mantra her youngest daughter, Kat, heard and subscribed to in her teens as she went out of her way to stay out of trouble. She said that Harold, however, sim- ply became a “nerd” at first in respect to his mom’s new job. In time, he did get into some typi- cal teenage mischief though, like burning rubber on the roads and otherwise harmless stunts. De- spite that, Marg recalled that no one could have been prouder of their mom than her.