colony · North America and Oceania

Province of New Hampshire

1629 CE – 1776 CE · capital Portsmouth

The small northern New England colony around Portsmouth, a source of masts for the Royal Navy, and the first colony to adopt its own constitution in 1776.

Origins

Fishing settlements at Dover and Portsmouth, then called Strawbery Banke, appeared on the Piscataqua River from 1623. In 1629 John Mason received a grant of the land between the Merrimack and the Piscataqua and named it after his home county of Hampshire. Exeter was founded in 1638 by the dissenting minister John Wheelwright.

Rule and society

Massachusetts Bay Colony governed the towns from 1641 until the Crown made New Hampshire a royal province in 1679. It shared a governor with the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1698 to 1741. Under Benning Wentworth, governor from 1741 to 1766, it issued the New Hampshire Grants west of the Connecticut River. Its economy rested on lumber, white-pine masts reserved for the navy, shipbuilding and fishing.

Decline and legacy

Royal governor John Wentworth fled in 1775. In January 1776 New Hampshire adopted a temporary constitution, the first of any colony, and joined the Declaration of Independence as a state of the United States.

Lineage

Province of New HampshireUnited States 1776 CE – present

Connections (4)

Province of New Hampshire was part of Massachusetts Bay Colony1641 CE – 1679 CE
Province of New Hampshire was a colony of Kingdom of England1679 CE – 1707 CE
Province of New Hampshire was part of Dominion of New England1686 CE – 1689 CE
Province of New Hampshire was a colony of Kingdom of Great Britain1707 CE – 1776 CE

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Cite this page

APA: The Epoch Institute. (2026). Province of New Hampshire. In The Epoch Institute States Register. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/province-of-new-hampshire
MLA: “Province of New Hampshire.” The Epoch Institute States Register, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/province-of-new-hampshire. Accessed .
Chicago: The Epoch Institute. “Province of New Hampshire.” The Epoch Institute States Register. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/province-of-new-hampshire.
Harvard: The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Province of New Hampshire’, The Epoch Institute States Register. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/province-of-new-hampshire (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random state ↻