New Hampshire

Named for an English county

New Hampshire takes its name from Hampshire, the county in southern England that Captain John Mason called home. In 1622 Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges received a grant covering the coast between the Merrimack and Kennebec rivers. When they divided it, Mason took the southern part, and on November 7, 1629, the Council for New England granted him the land between the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers under the name New Hampshire. Mason never saw his colony: he died before his planned voyage across the Atlantic.

First government, ninth state

New Hampshire moved early in the Revolution. In January 1776 it set up its own government under a written constitution, the first of the colonies to do so, although the document described the government as temporary, lasting only through the dispute with Great Britain. Twelve years later, on June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the US Constitution. Article VII required nine ratifications for the Constitution to take effect, so New Hampshire’s vote put it into force. The nine stars on the state flag mark that place in line.

A capital in Concord

For decades after the Revolution, New Hampshire’s legislature had no fixed home. It met at Exeter, Portsmouth, Concord and Hopkinton, and once each at Dover, Amherst, Charlestown and Hanover. From 1808 it settled in Concord, a central town on the Merrimack River, a shift that reflected political power moving from the seacoast to the interior. The granite State House, finished in 1819, is said to be the oldest state capitol in which both legislative chambers still meet in their original rooms. The capital page tells the story.

Live Free or Die

The motto comes from General John Stark. In 1809, too ill to attend a reunion marking the Revolutionary War’s Battle of Bennington, he sent a toast instead: “Live free or die.” The Legislature made it the state motto in 1945, together with a state emblem showing the Old Man of the Mountain, the granite profile in Franconia Notch. The Old Man collapsed in 2003, but he is still on the emblem.

The Granite State

New Hampshire’s nickname comes from the granite under much of the state. The phrase “Granite State” first appeared in a poem by Philip Carrigain read at a dinner for the Marquis de Lafayette in Concord in June 1825, and it spread after the Hutchinson Family Singers reworked the song in the 1840s. Granite is now the state rock, and the State House is built of it. Other, older nicknames include the White Mountain State, the Switzerland of America and the Mother of Rivers, because several of New England’s major rivers rise in its mountains.

Lilacs, finches and newts

New Hampshire has 29 official state symbols. The purple lilac, first planted in the state around 1750, has been the state flower since 1919, and the purple finch the state bird since 1957. The white birch is the state tree. Schoolchildren have proposed many of the others, from the ladybug in 1977 to the pumpkin, the Chinook sled dog and, in 2025, the Virginia opossum. The state flag shows the seal, with the frigate Raleigh being built at Portsmouth. See every symbol on the New Hampshire symbols page.

Land and people

New Hampshire covers 9,349 square miles, 46th among the states, and had about 1.42 million residents in 2025, 41st in the country and up from 2020. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine to the east and Canada to the north, and it has a short Atlantic coastline around Portsmouth. Manchester, with about 117,000 people, is the largest city, followed by Nashua, Concord, Dover and Rochester.