CARROLL COUNTY NH - History and Genealogy AT SEARCHROOTS

BRIEF HISTORY OF CARROLL CO., NEW HAMPSHIRE
Carroll County was created by an act of the state legislature approved December 23, 1840, which also formed Belknap County. The language of the act concerning the towns embraced in Carroll county is "the said county of Carroll shall contain all the lands and waters included within the following towns and places, which now constitute a part of the county of Strafford, to wit: Albany, Brookfield, Chatham, Conway, Eaton, Effingham, Freedom, Moultonborough, and the said towns be, and the same are herby, severed and disannexed from the county of Strafford."

By an act of the legislature approved January 5, 1853, Bartlett, Jackson, and Hart's Location were disannexed from the county of Coos and annexed to Carroll county. Boundaries between Belknap and Carroll counties were established in 1841, thus: "Beginning at the easterly termination of the line dividing the towns of Meredith and Moultonborough; thence running easterly to the southerly point of Long Island in Winnipisseogee lake; thence easterly to the westerly termination of the line dividing the towns of Wolfborough and Alton; and all the lands and waters lying northerly of said line and between that and said towns of Moultonborough, Tuftonborough, and Wolfborough shall constitute a part of said county of Carroll." The town of Madison was incorporated from the western part of Eaton in 1852.

Carroll county received it names in commemoration of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the most distinguished of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and by the diversified and lovely character of its bewitching scenery is keeping the name of a household word in the cultured minds of both the old and new worlds.

Strafford county, from which Carroll was formed, was one of the five original counties of New Hampshire, being made by the same act which created Rockingham, Hillsborough, Cheshire and Grafton, March 19, 1771. Many of the towns in Carroll have a much older corporate existence than the county, and some of them are as old as the five first counties. The early or pioneer stage belongs here rather to the towns than to the county.

Carroll county contains an area of nearly six hundred square miles, is surrounded on the north by Coos and Grafton counties, east by York and Oxford counties in Maine, southeast by Strafford county, southwest and west by Belknap and Grafton counties, and lies between 43" 28' and 44" 35' north latitude, and 3" 20' and 6" 10' longitude east from Washington.

In 1880 the entire population of Carroll county was 18, 291, and improvement over 1870 which showed 17,332, and a falling off from 1860 which gave 20, 465, and from 1850, which was 20,157. The highest peaks within the county include: Mt. Washington, 6293 ft; Mt. Adams 5,794; Mt. Jefferson, 5,714 ft.; Mt. Clay, 5,553 ft; Mt. Monroe, 5,384 ft; Mt. Little Monroe 4,204 ft.; Mt. Madison 5,365 ft; and a number more over 4,000 feet.

There are several boulders of note: The Conway Boulders in North Conway aka the Pequawket boulder; the Washington Boulder northwest of Conway Centre near Pine Hill; the Bartlett Boulder; Ordination Rock in Tamworth; and Madison Boulder, the largest of these glacial 'travelers' in the northwest part of Madison NH. Its county seat is OSSIPEE.[from the History of Carroll County, New Hampshire by Georgia Drew Merrill; Boston: W.A. Fergusson & Co., 1889]

The county seat of Carroll County is Ossipee NH.