Resources
- Acts and Law of His Majesty's Province of New Hampshire in New EnglandBook digitized by Google from the library of Harvard University and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.
- A Brief History of New Hampshire, New Hampshire AlmanacEarly historians record that in 1623, under the authority of an English land-grant, Captain John Mason, in conjunction with several others, sent David Thomson, a Scotsman, and Edward and Thomas Hilton, fish-merchants of London, with a number of other people in two divisions to establish a fishing colony in what is now New Hampshire, at the mouth of the Piscataqua River.
- A Brief History of Pre-Colonial New HampshireIn 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic and landed in the Caribbean becoming one of the first Europeans to set foot in the Americas. This land would soon be called the “New World” by explorers and colonists, but for the Indigenous peoples who had been living there for thousands of years this land was hardly new.
- History of New HampshireBefore contact with the English, about 3,000 Native Americans inhabited what eventually became New Hampshire.
Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire
Puritan Roger Williams, a separatist, establishes the state of Rhode Island after leaving Massachusetts.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxHCl7bxGJg
Perspectives
Colonial New Hampshire
In his full-scale history of New Hampshire from the Algonkin people to the coming of the American Revolution, the historian Jere R. Daniell discusses the Indian population, the development of community life, the founding of New Hampshire as a royal colony, the political adjustments that existence as a separate colony necessitated, the nature of New Hampshire’s social institutions, and many other subjects. His epilogue links colonial New Hampshire to subsequent developments in the state. This volume will interest historians of colonial New England and New Hampshire.
Jonathan Belcher
As early as the eighteenth century, New England's ministers were decrying public morality. Evangelical leaders such as Jonathan Edwards called for rulers to become spiritual as well as political leaders who would renew the people's covenant with God. The prosperous merchant Jonathan Belcher (1682-1757) self-consciously strove to become such a leader, an American Nehemiah. As governor of three royal colonies and early patron of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), Belcher became an important but controversial figure in colonial America. In this first biography of the colonial governor, Michael C. Batinski depicts a man unusually riddled with contradictions. While governor of Massachusetts, Belcher deftly maneuvered longstanding rivals toward a political settlement; yet as chief executive of New Hampshire, he plunged into bitter factional disputes that destroyed his administration. The quintessential Puritan, Belcher learned to thrive in London's cosmopolitan world and in the whiggish realm of the marketplace. He was at once the courtier and the country patriot. An insightful blend of social and political history, this biography demands that Belcher be recognized as the embodiment of the Nehemiah, perhaps as important in his own realm as Cotton Mather was in religious circles. Grappling with the contradictions of Belcher's actions, the author explains much about the complexities of the world in which Belcher lived and wielded influence.
Hanging Ruth Blay
The full account of the 18th-century hanging of a school teacher is detailed in detailed in Carolyn Marvin's dramatic tale. On a cold December morning in 1768, thirty-one-year-old Ruth Blay approached the gallows erected for her execution. Standing on the high ground in the northwest corner of what is now Portsmouth's old South Cemetery, she would have had a clear view across the pasture to the harbor and open sea. The eighteenth-century hanging of a schoolteacher for concealing the birth of a child out of wedlock has appeared in local legend over the last few centuries, but the full account of Ruth's story has never been told. Drawing on over two years of investigative research, author Carolyn Marvin brings to light the dramatic details of Ruth's life and the cruel injustice of colonial Portsmouth's moral code. As Marvin uncovers the real flesh-and-blood woman who suffered the ultimate punishment, her readers come to understand Ruth as an individual and a woman of her time.