Province of New Hampshire

Province of New Hampshire
1629–1641 1679–1686 1689–1776
Flag Seal of the Province of New Hampshire, 1692
Anthem: God Save the King (1745–1783)
John Wentworth
Legislature	General Court of New Hampshire
• Upper house	Executive Council
• Lower house	House of Representatives
History
• Established	1629
• First royal charter issued, governance from 1680	1679
• Dominion of New England	1686–1689
• Second royal charter issued, governance from 1692	1691
• Disestablished	1776
Currency	New Hampshire pound (Often pegged to the Pound sterling); Spanish dollar; Pound sterling
Preceded by Succeeded by Province of Maine Massachusetts Bay Colony Dominion of New England Massachusetts Bay Colony Dominion of New England New Hampshire
Today part of	United States New Hampshire

The Province of New Hampshire was a colony of England and later a British province in New England. The name was first given in 1629 to the territory between the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers on the eastern coast of North America, and was named after the county of Hampshire in southern England by Captain John Mason, its first named proprietor. In 1776 the province established an independent state and government, the State of New Hampshire, and joined with twelve other colonies to form the United States.

Europeans first settled New Hampshire in the 1620s, and the province consisted for many years of a small number of communities along the seacoast,

The province's economy was dominated by timber and fishing. The timber trade, although lucrative, was a subject of conflict with the crown, which sought to reserve the best trees for use as ship masts. Although the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts ruled the province for many years, the New Hampshire population was more religiously diverse, originating in part in its early years with refugees from opposition to religious differences in Massachusetts.

From the 1680s until 1760, New Hampshire was often on the front lines of military conflicts with

Permanent English settlement began after land grants were issued in 1622 to John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges for the territory between the Merrimack and Sagadahoc (Kennebec) rivers, roughly encompassing present-day New Hampshire and western Maine. Settlers, whose early leaders included David Thomson, Edward Hilton and his brother William Hilton, began settling the New Hampshire coast as early as 1623, and eventually expanded along the shores of the Piscataqua River and the Great Bay. These settlers were mostly intending to profit from the local fisheries. Mason and Gorges, neither of whom ever came to New England, divided their claims along the Piscataqua River in 1629.^[3] Mason took the territory between the Piscataqua and Merrimack, and called it "New Hampshire", after the English county of Hampshire.^[4]

Conflicts between holders of grants issued by Mason and Gorges concerning their boundaries eventually led to a need for more active management. In 1630, Captain Walter Neale was sent as chief agent and governor of the lower settlements on the Piscataqua (including Strawbery Banke, present-day Portsmouth), and in 1631 Captain Thomas Wiggin was sent to govern the upper settlements, comprising modern-day Dover, Durham and Stratham.^[5] After Mason died in 1635, the colonists and employees of Mason appropriated many of his holdings to themselves.^[6] Exeter was founded in 1638 by John Wheelwright, after he had been banished from the neighboring Massachusetts Bay Colony for defending the teachings of Anne Hutchinson, his sister-in-law. In the absence of granting authority from anyone associated with the Masons, Wheelwright's party purchased the land from local Indians. His party included William Wentworth, whose descendants came to play a major role in colonial history.^[7] Around the same time, others unhappy with the strict Puritan rule in Massachusetts settled in Dover, while Puritans from Massachusetts settled what eventually became Hampton.^[8]

Because of a general lack of government, the New Hampshire settlements sought the protection of their larger neighbor to the south, the

Samuel Allen, a businessman who had acquired the Mason claims, was appointed the first governor under the 1691 charter. He was equally unsuccessful in pursuing the Mason land claims, and was replaced in 1699 by the Earl of Bellomont. Bellomont was the first in a series of governors who ruled both New Hampshire and the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Until 1741 the governorships were shared, with the governor spending most of his time in Massachusetts. As a result, the lieutenant governors held significant power. The dual governorship became problematic in part because of territorial claims between Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Since the southern border of the original Mason grant was the Merrimack River, and the Massachusetts charter specified a boundary three miles north of the same river, the claims conflicted, and were eventually brought to the king's attention. In 1741, King George II decreed what is now the border between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and separated the governorships, issuing a commission to Benning Wentworth as New Hampshire governor.

Wentworth broadly interpreted New Hampshire's territorial claims, believing that territories west of the

Since the province was on the northern frontier bordering New France, its communities were frequently attacked during King William's War and Queen Anne's War, and then again in the 1720s during Dummer's War. Because of these wars the Indian population in the northern parts of the province declined, but settlements only slowly expanded into the province's interior. The province was partitioned into counties in 1769, later than the other twelve colonies that revolted against the British Empire.

American Revolution

Twelve other colonies joined with New Hampshire in resisting attempts by the British Parliament to impose taxes. After the American Revolutionary War began in April 1775, the province recruited regiments that served in the Siege of Boston, and was the first former European colony to formally establish an independent government, as the State of New Hampshire, in January 1776.

Demographics

From 1630 to 1780, the population of New Hampshire grew from 500 to 87,802.^[9][10][11] In 1623, the first permanent English settlements, Dover and Rye, were established,^[12][13][14] while Portsmouth was the largest city by 1773 with a population of 4,372.^[10] The black population in the colony grew from 30 in 1640 to 674 in 1773 (ranging between 1 and 4 percent of the population),^[9][10] but declined to 541 (or 0.6 percent of the population) by 1780.^[11]

In New Hampshire, unlike some of the other

• List of colonial governors of New Hampshire

Notes

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