History
of Hillsborough County, New Hampshire
Hillsborough
County was organized on May 6, 1771 and named in
honor of Wills
Hill, the Earl of Hillsborough. Today, the county has
the largest population in the state with 346,160 residents,
nearly one-third of whom live in the city of Manchester.
For
many years prior to 1740, the boundary lines of the province
of New Hampshire were in dispute. Massachusetts
claimed that the division boundary between Massachusetts
and New Hampshire was defined by a line drawn from a point
on the Atlantic coast 3 miles north of the mouth of the
Merrimack
River, and running on the northerly and easterly side
of the river, at a distance of 3 miles from it, to a point
3 miles beyond the parallel of the junction of the Winnipiseogee
and the Pemigewasset; thence due west to the Connecticut.
This included all the territory included in the present-day
limits of Hillsborough County, with the exceptions of the
town of Pelham and a portion of the town of Hudson which
was more than 3 miles from the Merrimack River. It also
included the whole of Cheshire
County and the larger part of the present-day Merrimack
and Sullivan
Counties.
New
Hampshire claimed for her southern boundary a line due west
from the same point on the ocean. By this claim the towns
of Pelham, Hudson,
Litchfield, Nashua,
Merrimack, Hollis,
Amherst and other towns
lying within about 14 miles of latitude were conceded to
be within Massachusetts.
The
ancient town of Dunstable,
which contained more than two hundred square miles, and
included all of the towns named above and portions of other
towns within the present limits of New Hampshire, made a
part of the county of Middlesex, in Massachusets, and had
not, before 1740, been regarded by any party as in part
the territory of the province of New Hampshire.
The
boundary between Massachusetts and New Hampshire was finally
determined, in 1741, by the King himself who ended the controversy
in favor of New Hampshire, and fixed the present boundary,
granting a much larger territory to New Hampshire than had
been claimed earlier. Upon the settlement of the question,
the towns which had had a corporate existence under Massachusetts
were rechartered by the province of New Hampshire, and new
towns were formed from those portions of existing towns
cut off from Massachusetts.
In 1771,
New Hampshire was divided into five counties. Hillsborough
County was formed at that time as one of the original counties.
By 1823,
there were 42 townships within Hillsborough County.
Several of the northern townships were set off to the newly
formed Merrimack County the same year. The townships which
became part of Merrimack County were: Andover, Boscawen,
Bradford, Dunbarton, Fishersfield, Henniker, Hooksett, Hopkinton,
New London, Salisbury, Sutton, and Warner.
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 Andy's
Summer Playhouse in Wilton, and Stage
One Productions in Manchester.
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 College and Rivier
College in Nashua; Southern
NH University (formerly New Hampshire College),
Notre
Dame College [closed, archives] and Springfield
College in Manchester; and Saint
Anselm College in Goffstown. Parks, such as Greenfield,
Miller,
Fox
[State Forest] and Silver
Lake State Parks and Beaver
Brook and Shieling
Forest offer outdoor recreation while the Currier
Museum of Art and the NH
Institute of Art (formerly 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.[Hesser
College, later renamed Mt. Washington College is closing
in 2016 and has been removed from this list].
Communties
in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire include the following:
Amherst, Antrim, Bedford, Bennington, Brookline, Deering,
Francestown, Goffstown,
Greenfield, Greenville, Hancock, Hillsborough, Hollis, Hudson,
Litchfield, Lyndeborough, Manchester,
Mason, Merrimack,
Milford, Mont
Vernon, Nashua, New Boston, New Ipswich, Pelham, Peterborough,
Sharon, Temple, Weare, Wilton, and Windsor. [See
Town List for more information regarding individual
towns].
