New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. Of the 50 U.S. states, New Hampshire is the fifth smallest by area and the tenth least populous, with slightly more than 1.3 million residents. Concord is the state capital, while Manchester is the largest city. New Hampshire’s motto is “Live Free or Die”, which reflects its involvement in the American Revolutionary War. Its nickname, “The Granite State”, refers primarily to its large granite formations and quarries. It is best known nationwide for holding the first primary (after the Iowa caucus) in the U.S. presidential election cycle.

Algonquian-speaking peoples like the Abenaki inhabited New Hampshire for thousands of years. Europeans arrived in New Hampshire in the 17th century. The English established some of the first non-indigenous settlements. The Province of New Hampshire was founded in 1629 and named after the English county of Hampshire. New Hampshire witnessed one of the first overt acts rebellious in 1774, when it was seize Fort William and Mary from British colonists. This occurred after tensions between the crown and British colonies grew during the 1760s. It became the first of the British North American colonies in January 1776 to establish an independent government. Six months later, it signed a United States Declaration of Independence. It also contributed troops, ships and supplies to the war against Britain. It was the ninth state that ratified the U.S. Constitution in June 1788, thereby making it the first to do so.

New Hampshire was an active center for abolitionism in the mid-19th century. It fielded close 32,000 Union soldiers during the U.S. Civil War. After the war, the state saw rapid industrialization and population growth, becoming a center of textile manufacturing, shoemaking, and papermaking; the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester was at one time the largest cotton textile plant in the world. The Merrimack and Connecticut rivers were lined with industrial mills, most of which employed workers from Canada and Europe; French Canadians formed the most significant influx of immigrants, and today roughly a quarter of all New Hampshire residents claim French American ancestry, second only to Maine.