New Hampshire was one of thirteen New England colonies that seceded from the motherland and formed the United States of America.
According to Acronymmonster, the state, which bears its name after the English county of Hampshire, is located in the northeastern United States, its neighboring states are Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts. In the north it borders on the Canadian province of Québec, in the southeast on the Atlantic. Around 1.3 million people (as of 2019) live in an area of 24,216 square kilometers, over 93 percent of them white. Many of the state’s residents are of French-Canadian descent, with French being the main spoken language in some regions. The largest city in the state with around 110,000 residents is Manchester (as of 2010), while the capital Concord only has around 43,000 residents (as of 2010).
History of the State of New Hampshire
The history of the state of New Hampshire begins in the 17th century when the English King Charles I gave the colonialists John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges land, which had been inhabited by various Indian tribes since ancient times. In the following years, settlers from the Old World settled in the area. New Hampshire was one of the 13 colonies that rebelled against the British government and declared their detachment from Great Britain with the Declaration of Independence in July 1776. In January of the same year, New Hampshire was the first colony to set up a government and pass a constitution. In June 1788, New Hampshire was accepted into the Union of the United States of America along with twelve other founding states.
New Hampshire today
In terms of the prosperity indicator, real GDP per capita, New Hampshire was ranked 18th out of 50 US states in 2016, and the unemployment rate in December 2019 was 2.6 percent, well below the national average. An important industry is granite mining, which has earned the state the nickname “The Granite State”. Other branches of industry are agriculture and the electrical and paper industries. In New Hampshire, true to the state motto “Live free or die,” there is no income tax or sales tax. New Hampshire has a good business climate thanks to its low tax rate compared to other states.
Largest Counties in New Hampshire by Area
According to Countryaah, the biggest counties in New Hampshire are listed as below:
Ranking | County | Area |
1 | Coos County | 4,665 km2 |
2 | Grafton County | 4,439 km2 |
3 | Carroll County | 2,419 km2 |
4 | Merrimack County | 2,419 km2 |
5 | Hillsborough County | 2,269 km2 |
6 | Cheshire County | 1,834 km2 |
7 | Rockingham County | 1,800 km2 |
8 | Sullivan County | 1,391 km2 |
9 | Belknap County | 1,039 km2 |
10 | Strafford County | 956 km2 |