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On January 4, 1776, New Hampshire became the first British colony to declare its independence from Great Britain. Since New Hampshire was now an independent state, its leaders wrote a new constitution for it, which laid out how the government would function. New Hampshire, therefore, formed the first state government in America. 

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In the summer of 1777, the British army launched a massive campaign through the Hudson River Valley in New York and Vermont to divide the New England colonies from the rest of America. Fighting between the British and Americans went on all summer, but in the middle of August, New Hampshire’s General John Stark arrived in southern Vermont with a large group of New Hampshire soldiers. They fought a portion of the British army near a town called Bennington and won. Stark’s victory kept the British from gathering supplies and cost the British army many men who were captured, wounded, or killed. The British defeat at Bennington weakened them. A few months later, the Americans won an even bigger victory against the British at the Battle of Saratoga, which was the turning point of the American Revolution. 

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New Hampshire used to have enslaved people. The first enslaved people in America were kidnapped in Africa and brought to the New World where they were sold for their labor. They had to work for their masters without being paid, and they weren't allowed to make their own decisions about their lives. Their children were also enslaved, and their grandchildren and so on. Most enslaved people in America lived in the South, but even colonies in the North, like New Hampshire and Massachusetts, had enslaved people. During the American Revolution, when people were talking about the importance of freedom and equality, many enslaved people started to question why they weren’t also free. In Portsmouth, 20 enslaved people wrote a very well-crafted petition to the new state government. They argued that if America was a land of freedom, then they should not have to live as slaves. The state government did not act on the petition or free them from slavery. 

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When the 13 American colonies declared themselves independent from Britain, they had to form a government for their new country. They had to decide how political power was going to be shared between the states and the federal government and develop a process for passing laws that would govern the new country. At first they wrote a document called the Articles of Confederation, but the Articles didn’t work very well and they set them aside. Next they wrote a document called the Constitution. For the Constitution to go into effect, 9 of the 13 states had to agree to it, which is called ratifying. In June 1788, New Hampshire ratified the new Constitution and was the 9th state to do so. Even though other states ratified the Constitution too, New Hampshire’s vote meant the new Constitution could go into effect. 

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In 1796, an enslaved woman named Ona Judge ran away from her master in the South and came to New Hampshire. Her master was George Washington, the president of the United States. Washington owned many slaves at his plantation in Virginia, and he wasn’t willing to just let Ona go. Instead, he tried to catch her and bring her back to slavery. Slavery was not very popular in New Hampshire by this point, though, and New Hampshire authorities refused to help Washington capture her, even if he was the president. Although Ona always worried about being recaptured, she never was, and lived the rest of her life in New Hampshire. 

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There were no big roads in New Hampshire during the 1700s like the highways we have today. Instead, all the roads in the state were local, linking one village to another. Each town was responsible for building and repairing their own roads, and sometimes the towns didn’t do a great job of it. In the late 1700s, some investors got together and decided to build a nice, big road that would run across the middle of the state, from Portsmouth to Concord. They called the new road the New Hampshire Turnpike. Although it was a toll road, meaning people had to pay to use it, the road was in much better condition than the smaller, local roads. The turnpike was wider than most roads and had fewer potholes. It made traveling from one part of the state to another much faster and easier. Soon other turnpikes were built in New Hampshire, linking most of the regions of the state together in a road network. 

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The first cotton mill in New Hampshire was built in New Ipswich in 1803. It was a small mill, but it used giant machines, known as looms, to weave cloth, which would normally take a long time to weave by hand. The looms were powered by water. Because the looms could make more cloth faster, the owners of the mill made more money. The success of the mill encouraged others across the state to open their own textile mills. Eventually there were mills all over New Hampshire. 

 

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It wasn’t until the early 1800s that people started exploring the White Mountains, which were beautiful but rugged. Men building a road through Franconia Notch in 1805 saw a group of rocks that looked just like a giant head. They called the rock formation the Old Man of the Mountain, and soon tourists came from all over to see the Old Man. The Old Man eventually became a symbol for the state, and he often appears on all sorts of things having to do with New Hampshire, even license plates and bobbleheads! 

 

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New Hampshire’s most famous Revolutionary War soldier, General John Stark, used the term “Live free or die” in 1809. He was writing a letter to some fellow veterans who had organized a dinner to celebrate the anniversary of Stark’s great victory in 1777, the Battle of Bennington. Stark was too sick to attend the dinner, but instead he sent a letter. The letter praised the men for fighting in the American Revolution. Stark wrote, “Live free or die, death is not the greatest of evils.” A newspaper published Stark’s letter, and the phrase “Live free or die” seemed to stick in everyone’s minds. It wasn’t until 1945, though, that Stark’s phrase officially became the state motto of New Hampshire. 

 

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The Merrimack River is the largest river in New Hampshire. At a time when it was still difficult and slow to travel on roads, water travel was the fastest way to move goods and people from one place to another. People used rivers almost like they use highways today. The Merrimack River was an important highway because it was so big and it went through the center of the state. But it had many waterfalls and rough water which boats couldn’t get around, especially between Manchester and Concord. In the early 1800s, a series of locks and canals were built so boats could navigate around the falls. These changes made it possible for a boat to travel all the way from Boston to Concord. 

 

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Maps have always been very important in settling new land and in protecting people’s claims to land they believe they own. There were a few early maps of parts of New Hampshire, but by the early 1800s, people realized they needed a map of the whole state. New Hampshire Secretary of State Philip Carrigain took on the job of creating this map, although it took him much longer to make it than anyone expected—more than 10 years! The Carrigain map showed all of New Hampshire, including the White Mountains and the North Country, which had never been mapped before. It became the official state map for the first half of the 19th century. 

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For the first few decades New Hampshire was a state, it didn’t have a state capital. Instead, the state government moved between several towns, including Portsmouth, Exeter, Dover, and Hopkinton. Finally, around 1810, the state government decided to settle in Concord, which was in the center of the state geographically and had a good road system, making it easy for people to travel to and from the new capital. In 1816, the state government ordered the construction of a building where they could conduct their business. It would be called the State House, and when it was finished in 1819, it was the largest building in the state. Made out of Concord granite, the State House would become the political center of the state, and it would also become a place that celebrated all the important people in New Hampshire’s history with statues and portraits. 

 

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In June 1825, the state government held a big dinner on the State House lawn in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette was a Frenchman who became an American hero during the American Revolution 50 years earlier. He returned to America in 1825 and took a grand tour of all the states to celebrate America’s 50th birthday. At this dinner on the State House lawn, New Hampshire Secretary of State Philip Carrigain gave a toast to Lafayette in which he referred to New Hampshire as the Granite State. New Hampshire had already gained a reputation for the fine granite stone found in the state, which was starting to be used in buildings all over New England. The nickname stuck, and New Hampshire has been known as the Granite State ever since. 

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In the 1820s, not many people lived in the White Mountains. One family, the Willeys, built a homestead near Crawford Notch. The family included a mother, father, five children, and two hired hands. In August 1826, a huge storm moved through the area and set off a massive landslide in the little valley where the Willeys lived. The landslide destroyed almost everything in the valley except the Willeys’ house. Unfortunately, when the Willeys heard the landslide begin, they left their house and tried to run away from the landslide, which didn’t work. They were all killed, even though their house miraculously survived. News traveled all over the country of the Willey tragedy and the strange story that their house was just as they left it, with beds unmade, and books and food sitting on the table. In fact, tourists started coming to the White Mountains just to see the Willeys’ house. This became the start of a tourism boom to the White Mountains. People came to see the Willeys’ house but were so impressed with the beauty of the White Mountains that they stayed for long visits and began to explore the area more. 

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A Concord coach is a type of stagecoach that made travel easier and more comfortable for people in the 19th century. The Abbot-Downing Company of Concord became famous for making the best and most luxurious stagecoaches of the century. They designed their coaches so that the passenger compartment swayed gently with the motion of the horses rather than bouncing up and down. Concord coaches were widely used in the eastern portion of America until railroads became popular. Most people think of them in connection with the American West, where they were used for most of the 19th century. They were used all over the world, though, in places as far away as Australia. Wells Fargo Bank adopted the Concord coach as its symbol, which is still in use today. 

 

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With all of the rivers in New Hampshire, the state soon became a center for textile mills, which needed water power from the rivers to work the machinery, like looms, to weave cloth and fabric. Manchester was particularly well-placed for textile mills, as the Merrimack River ran strong in that area, and its water generated a lot of power. The Amoskeag Manufacturing Company bought a series of small mills in Manchester in 1831 and united them all under one company. They also built dozens of new mill buildings. Soon Manchester had become the biggest textile manufacturing company in the world. In the early 1900s, the company produced 50 miles of woven cloth per hour. Thousands of immigrants came to Manchester to work in the mills. 

 

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The first railroad tracks were laid in New Hampshire in 1838. The tracks ran from Nashua south for 5 miles before crossing the Massachusetts border and continuing on to Boston. Within less than 10 years, the Boston, Concord, and Montreal Railroad had built railroads throughout the southern part of the state. Because people could travel faster and easier by train than any other form of transportation, having railroads in New Hampshire made people in different towns and communities feel more connected to one another. 

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By the middle of the 19th century, more and more people in the North had decided that slavery was a bad thing, but not very many politicians had spoken against slavery. In 1845, John Parker Hale, who was a senator from New Hampshire, publicly declared that slavery was a terrible thing and should be stopped, even in the South where slavery was very popular. Hale was the first U.S. senator to speak out against slavery. Afterward, several more politicians spoke out against slavery as well.