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New Hampshire State...
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New Hampshire Counties
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New Hampshire Counties
There are currently 10 counties in the state of New Hampshire. Five of the counties were
created in 1769, when New Hampshire was still an English colony and not a state, during the first subdivision of
the state into counties. The last counties created were Belknap County and Carroll County, in 1840. The majority
of New Hampshire's counties were named for prominent British or American people or geographic locations and
features. Only one county's name originates in a Native American language; Coos County, named for a Native
American word meaning crooked and referring to a bend in the Connecticut River. |
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New Hampshire Counties
New Hampshire was named in 1629 by Captain John Mason of Plymouth Council for his home county in England. Algonquian-speaking peoples, including the Pennacook, lived in the region when the Europeans arrived. The first explorers in the area were England's
Martin Pring in 1603 and France's Champlain in 1605. The first settlement was established at Odiorne's Point (now the port of Rye, New Hampshire). Native American conflicts were ended in 1759 by Robert Rogers' Rangers. In 1774, before the American Revolution, New Hampshire residents seized a British
fort at Portsmouth, and drove out the royal governor. In 1776 New Hampshire was the first colony to adopt its own constitution. Three regiments served in the Continental Army, and scores of privateers raided British shipping. New Hampshire did not adopt a state flag until 1909. Prior to that time,
numerous regimental flags served to represent the state. The New Hampshire flag consists of the state seal centered on a blue field and surrounded by a wreath of laurel leaves with nine stars interspersed. New Hampshire was the ninth of the original thirteen states to ratify the Constitution
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County Resource Guide
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The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we've given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic
features of our country!"
But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.
Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally,
act locally." |
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