New Hampshire

One of the New England colonies, New Hampshire was among the smallest British colonies in both population and area. The future colony of New Hampshire was inhabited for at least 10,000 years. When Europeans first arrived, approximately 4,000 ALGoNQuiN-speaking people of the western Abenaki Indians lived in the region. These groups subsisted by hunting and fishing as well as by cultivating corn and beans. Besides maintaining semipermanent villages, they sent out hunting parties and, at times, migrated seasonally. Politically, western Abenaki tribes had a chief, a council, and regular meetings of all adult tribal members to discuss and decide serious matters.

French and English fishermen probably were among the first Europeans to visit New Hampshire as they stopped to dry their catch or to trade with Natives. The English captain Martin Pring sailed his two ships, the Speedwell and Discoverer, up the Piscataqua River in June 1603, and the founder of the French colonies in North America, Samuel de Champlain, arrived in July 1605. In 1614 the well-known English explorer John Smith charted the coast of the region, discovered the Isles of Shoals, and publicized its rich natural resources, particularly forests, fur, and fish in his description of future New England.

The colonization of New Hampshire began in the 1620s, when the Council for New England granted several land patents to establish settlements and trade posts in the area. On August 10, 1622, the former governor of Newfoundland, Captain John Mason, and Sir Ferdinando Gorges received from the council a grant of the territory between the Merrimack and Kennebec Rivers. In 1629, when the new owners divided the territory between themselves, John Mason received the lands between the

Merrimack and Piscataqua Rivers. The proprietor called his domain New Hampshire after his home county in England. In 1623 David Thompson founded the first English settlement in New Hampshire near the mouth of the Piscataqua River, which existed for several years. merchants from London, including Edward and William Hilton, established a new settlement in 1628 several miles northward that became Dover. In 1631 Mason initiated a settlement at the mouth of the Piscataqua named Strawberry Banke.

Another impetus for the colonization of New Hampshire came from its southern neighbor—the Massachusetts Bay Colony. While the Puritan dissenters from Massachusetts under the Reverend John Wheelwright established the town of Exeter in 1638, the Boston authorities also supported a settlement in the region in 1639 that became the town of Hampton.

The natural resources of the region shaped the development of the economy and the primary occupations of the settlers (farming, fishing, fish and fur trading, lumbering, and shipbuilding) and propelled the colony into the lucrative transatlantic trade with the Caribbean and European markets. New Hampshire also supplied fish products to Massachusetts and Virginia as well as to Spain, Madeira, and the Canary Islands. Most important, wood and wood products of New Hampshire (clapboards, oak barrels, and casks) were in great demand in the West Indies and southern Europe, primarily for the shipping of rum, molasses, and sugar, and as fuel for sugar processing. By 1671 New Hampshire was exporting 20,000 tons of boards and staves yearly.

The white pine forests of New Hampshire made it a source of ship masts, timber, and naval stores for the Royal Navy. The export of masts from the colony grew from 56 in 1695 to 500 in 1742. The mast trade also gave rise to a protest movement in the Exeter area. In the 1734 Mast Free Riot, colonists registered their opposition to the practice of marking the best trees in the forests for the Royal Navy. With the rapidly expanding settlement of New Hampshire from the 1690s to the 1760s, the economy of the colony grew more diverse. In 1719, for example, Presbyterian colonists from northern Ireland and Scotland founded the town of Londonderry and initiated the cultivation of potatoes.

The expansion of white settlements heightened tensions with local Indians. From 1675 to 1756 there were several wars and numerous clashes between the English and the Abenaki tribes. These conflicts were interconnected with the Anglo-French struggle over North America and the long-standing enmity between the Abenaki and the Iroquois, who lived west of Abenaki lands. Because they frequently fought the pro-British Iroquois, the Abenaki sought French military support and trade, and they established a formidable alliance with the French during a long series of ferocious conflicts in the region. New Hampshire played an active role in this monumental struggle as a theater of military operations, as a recruitment and supply base, and as a communication route for British forces. By 1759 nearly 1,000 men from New Hampshire were enlisted to serve in the army outside the colony. During King William’s War (1689-97) the Abenaki tribes raided Dover, Salmon Falls, Exeter, Durham, and other New Hampshire settlements. Large-scale Indian raids resumed during King George’s War (1744-48). During the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) the colonial militia, led by Captain Robert Rogers, and British troops, drove the Abenaki tribes northward.

The politics of New Hampshire were dominated by disputes with the neighboring colonies of Massachusetts and New York. The widespread confusions, false claims, and misinformation about the region’s geography led to overlapping land grants, ambiguous borders, and continuous territorial disputes on the southern and western frontiers of New Hampshire. Additionally, developments in the early history of New Hampshire favored claims of the Massachusetts Bay Colony on the entire territory of New Hampshire.

After the sudden death of John Mason, the small colony of only several hundred white inhabitants was left without a central government and existed as a conglomerate of semi-independent settlements. The situation was further complicated by the influx of Puritan settlers from Massachusetts, driven out of that colony by religious disputes. By 1640 these Puritan dissidents constituted more than half of the nearly 1,000 white residents of New Hampshire. There were numerous quarrels between the new Puritan settlements (Exeter, Hampton) and the traditional Anglican Strawberry Banke area; Hilton Point (the future Dover) often fluctuated in its loyalty between the two. The religious and political disputes and instability as well as the consent of local Puritans invited interference from Boston. Wealthy landowners and merchants of New Hampshire allied themselves with the Massachusetts Puritans to resist John Mason’s heirs, who attempted to confirm their land rights in New Hampshire. Additionally, the continuous menace of Indian attacks forced the New Hampshire colonists to turn to Massachusetts and its strong militia for defense. During the 1640s England, involved in its own civil war, was unable to control the territorial ambitions of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

By 1637 Massachusetts laid claim to all of New Hampshire, and within five years nearly all settlements in the colony conceded to the authority of Boston. Strawberry Banke was incorporated by Massachusetts in 1653 and renamed Portsmouth. Because of the religious and political concessions Boston made to New Hampshire, the colony did not experience large-scale religious persecutions except for a brief repression of the Quakers in 1659-60.

In 1679 the Crown, to strengthen its control over New England and in response to continuous appeals from the Mason family, reversed the Massachusetts territorial gains and in September 1680 created the separate royal province of New Hampshire. Nevertheless, there were other periods when New Hampshire rejoined Massachusetts for political, economic, and security reasons. The two colonies were joined officially in the Dominion of New England from 1686 to 1689, and between 1690 and 1692 they cooperated against the military threat of the French and Indians. From 1698 to 1741 New Hampshire and Massachusetts shared the same governor, with New Hampshire being ruled by the lieutenant governor. After 1741 New Hampshire had its own governor.

After 1749 New Hampshire struggled with New York over the lands between the Connecticut River and Lake Champlain. Before 1769 New Hampshire’s governors granted land to more than 130 towns in the region. Although the Crown settled the boundary line between the two colonies in 1764 in favor of New York, the dispute continued until the American Revolution.

In 1680 the Crown established a government for New Hampshire that consisted of a president of the province (later a governor), a council of governor’s appointees, and an elected assembly. Voting rights were limited to affluent males by the 50-pound property qualification. By the end of the 17th century the assembly had used its financial prerogatives to broaden its political power. This created numerous conflicts between the executive and the assembly. Governor Edward Cranfield (1682-84), whose commission was finally revoked by the Crown for numerous illegalities and abuse of power, ruled for several years without the assembly, which refused to pass his revenue bills. By 1699 the assembly had established its own leadership, a set of formal rules, and its printed organ—The House Journal. Even one of the most effective and pragmatic royal governors in British America—New Hampshire’s Benning Wentworth (1741-67)—experienced several rounds of tough confrontation with the assembly, although the situation of the colony stabilized considerably during his tenure.

Several powerful Puritan families of wealthy merchants, landowners, and fish traders (the Cutts, Vaughans, and Waldrons) dominated politics in New Hampshire from 1640 to 1715. After 1715, with the growing importance of the mast trade, the Wentworth dynasty of mast traders came to the center of New Hampshire’s political life. The family produced two governors and one lieutenant governor of the colony.

The political stabilization and economic development of the colony led to the growth of its white population (from some 10,000 in 1700 to 25,000 in the mid-1730s). The majority lived in more than 140 towns and villages, and most were of British ancestry. In 1756 the first newspaper in the colony, The New Hampshire Gazette, was established.

Further reading: Jere R. Daniell, Colonial New Hampshire: A History (Millwood, N. Y.: KTO Press, 1981); David E. Van Deventer, The Emergence of Provincial New Hampshire, 1623-1741 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).

—Peter Rainow