e-ReferenceDesk's College and 50 State Learning Resource Guide

Find Online Colleges

Find Campus Colleges

New Hampshire State...

New Hampshire

Choose a County

Belknap, Carroll, Cheshire, Coos, Grafton, Hillsborough, Merrimack, Rockingham, Strafford, Sullivan

New Hampshire Counties

Click Image to Enlarge

New Hampshire Counties

There arecurrently 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.

Hillsborough County, New Hampshire

Hillsborough County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Nashua
Year Organized: 1769
Square Miles: 876

Court House:

329 Mast Road, Suite 120
County Courthouse
Goffstown, NH 03045-0000

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Wills Hill, 1st Marquess of Downshire, PC (30 May 1718 – 7 October 1793), was a British politician of the Georgian era. He was usually called the Earl of Hillsborough in America when he served as Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1768–1772, a critical period leading toward the American Revolution. (Hillsborough County, New Hampshire and Hillsborough County, Florida in the United States are named in his honor.)

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Hillsborough County was organized on May 6, 1771 and named in honor of Will Hill, the Earl of Hillsborough. The county has the largest population in the state with 346,160 residents, nearly one-third of whom live in the city of Manchester.

During the 1800s, Manchester was known as the textile capital of the United States. The Amoskeag Mills at Amoskeag Falls on the Merrimack River employed 17,000 people and produced four million yards of cloth per week at its peak.

Nashua, the second largest city in the county and also the state, was the first inland town to be settled in New Hampshire.

Peterborough was the inspiration for and the site of the first performance of the play, Our Town, by Thornton Wilder. The town of Hillsborough was the birthplace of our 14th president, Franklin Pierce. The county also boasts several playhouses and theaters, among them, the Palace Theater in Manchester and the American Stage Festival in Milford.

Dominant industries include manufacture and retail trade. Hillsborough County is the leading source of meals and rooms tax revenues for the state. Colleges in the county include the University of New Hampshire at Manchester and Nashua, Daniel Webster and Rivier in Nashua, Southern New Hampshire University, Hesser, Notre Dame and Springfield College in Manchester and Saint Anselm in Goffstown. Parks, such as Greenfield, Miller, Fox and Silver Lake State Parks and Beaver Brook and Shieling Forest offer outdoor recreation while the Currier Gallery of Art and the Institute of Arts and Sciences in Manchester and the Nashua Arts and Science Center provide cultural opportunities. The county agricultural fair at the 4H Youth Center in New Boston, always held on the weekend following Labor Day, and Manchester's Riverfest on the Merrimack River in the millyard are annual celebrations of rural and urban county life.

Neighboring Counties:

Merrimack County (north)
Rockingham County (east)
Essex County, Massachusetts (southeast)
Middlesex County, Massachusetts (south)
Worcester County, Massachusetts (southwest)
Cheshire County (west)
Sullivan County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Amherst	town
- Antrim	town
- Bedford	town
- Bennington	town
- Brookline	town
- Deering	town
- Dunbarton	town
- Francestown	town
- Goffstown	town
- Greenfield	town
- Greenville	town
- Hancock	town
- Hillsborough	town
- Hollis	town
- Hudson	town
- Litchfield	town
- Lyndeborough	town
- Manchester	city	Incorporated Area
- Mason	town
- Merrimack	town
- Milford	town
- Mont Vernon	town
- Nashua (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- New Boston	town
- New Ipswich	town
- Pelham	town
- Peterborough	town
- Sharon	town
- Temple	town
- Weare	town
- Wilton	town
- Windsor	town

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this 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."