NEW HAMPSHIRE
7SG
NEW HAMPSHIRE
school district ami may raise money by taxation for
school purposes, and may, separately or uniting with
other districts, establish a high school, or contract
with academies in its vicinity for instruction of its
scholars. The districts must meet at least once annu-
ally; oftener. if necessary. In the larger towns and
cities the schools are graded and, liberally provided
for, arc in charge of locid officials, elected by the peo-
ple in evcrj' district, town, and ward, and known as
School Committees. In the cities these form school-
boards and appoint superinlendents. All are under
the general care of the Sl:ite i^iiperintendent of Public
Instruction, appointed liy the governor. In 190S
there were 2127 public schools, with a membership of
54,472 pupils, under 2',)'.)'.) teachers, of whom 2.>') were
men. Manual training is provided in Manchester,
Concord, Portsmouth, Rochester, and Berlin.
E\ening schools are maintained in three cities, at- tended by 3I),5 pupils, of which 308 are male. In places of 4000 people and over, 796 children attend kindergartens. The New Hampshire School for the Feeble Minded, at Laconia, has 89 inmates, under 4 instructors. There were 58 public high schools, with 243 teachers (84 men), and 5250 pupils. The State Normal School at Plymouth (founded 1870) has 14 teachers and ISO pupils, with 350 children in the model schools. Another normal school is in pros- pect. The total revenue from taxation for the public schools (190t7-7) w.os .?1,293,013. Apart, from Catho- lic schools, there are 24 secondary schools reported in 1908, with 167 teachers and 3235 pupils, over 900 of these being elementary. Among the private acade- mies in the state, Phillips Exeter Academy deserves special meni ion. The New Hampshire College of Agri- culture and the Mechanical Arts at Durham (founded 1867) is an excellent and liberally endowed state insti- tution with 196 -students (1908), 9 men and 13 women in general science ; 48 men and 2 women in agriculture, and 124 men in engineering; professors and instruc- tors, 31. Dartmouth College, at Hanover, (founded 1769) the chief university of the state, is an incorpor- ated institution, not under state control. It has 69 professors in its collegiate department and 23 in its professional departments; 1102 collegiate students and 58 professional, including the Medical Depart- ment , t he Thayer School of Civil Engineering, and the Amos Tuck .School of Finance. St. Anselm's College, founded by the Benedictine Fathers in 1893 at the in- vitation of Bishop Bradley, is situated in GofFstown. The courses are collegiate, academic, and commercial, with 18 professors, 3 assistants, and 1.56 students. There is a fine state library at Concord and excellent libraries in all the cities. Every town of any impor- tance either has its own library or is in easy reach of ex- cellent hbrary accommodations.
History. — Civil. — The first to settle in the limits of New Hampshire seems to have been David Thom- son, a .Scotchman, who in 1622 was granted 6000 acres and an island in New England (N. H. State Papers, XXV, 715). Forming a partnership with .some Ply- mouth merchants, he came over in 1623 and settled south of the Piscataqua, calling the place Little Har- bour. Nothing is known of this settlement, except that about three years afterwards Thomson moved to an island in Boston harbour which still bears his name. It is claimed with reason that at about the same time William and Edward Hilton settled a few miles further up tlu^ Piscataqua at what was called Hilton's Point or Northam, now Dover, though the formal grant of their i)atent was 1630 (Belknap, "Hi.'-t.", 8). .\lso, that all these men were sent by .John Ma.sf)n, Ferdinando (!orges, and a company of English merchants. In 1621 , 1622. and 1629, Sir Fer- dinando Gorges, an officer in the Engli.sh navy, and Captain John Mason, a Lontlon merchant, afterward a naval officer and Governor of Newfoundland, both royal favourites, procured various grants of what is
now New Hampshire and a great deal more, from the
Plymouth Company, organized by .lames I "for the
planting, ruling, and governing of New England", and
apparently under some arrangement with Thomson
and others interested, sent over some eighty men and
women duly supplied and furni.shed, by whom settle-
ments were made on both sides of the Piscataiiua near
its mouth. Building a hou.se, called Mason Hall, they
began .salt works, calling the settlement .Strawberry
Bank; while at Ncwitchwannock, now South Berwick,
Maine, they built a saw mill. Things went along
passably well till Mason died in 1635, after which
the houses and cattle were taken to satisfy the wages
and claims of his servants. Neither he nor Gorges
seem to have reaped any profit from their investment.
The claims of the Mason heirs were a bone of conten-
tion till 1788, when a settlement was effected. On
tW'O different occasions they dehvered the colony from
Mas.sachusetts's sway on account of the influence the
claimants had first with Charles II in 1679 and again
with William III in 1692.
The settlements spread slowly, the people coming chiefly from Hampshire County, where Mason had held a lucrative office under the crown and from which he had named the plantation "New Hampshire". In 1638 John Wheelwright, a preacher, who had been dis- franchised and banished from Boston for his religious opinions, settled, with some adherents, at Squamscott Falls, as being outside the Massachusetts patent, call- ing the place E,xeter, and here they organized a local government, creating three magistrates, the laws to be made by the townsmen in public assembly, with the assent of the magistrates. The settlements at Dover and Strawberry Bank (Portsmouth) soon fol- lowed the example of Exeter and established local self- government. It is important to note that Mason, Gorges, Thomson, the Hiltons, and the wealthy merchants associated with them, were devoted sup- porters of the Church of England. The powerful Massachusetts Bay Colony, then the very essence of intense Puritanism, soon turned its attention to the struggling Anglican colonies on its northern borders, which it determined to seize. Proceeding with con- summate craft and skill, they laid out the town of Hampton, clearly within the Mason patent, and set- tled it with people from Norfolk (Belknap, 1, 38), over the Mason protest. They procured powerful Puritan friends. Lords Say and Brook, and others, to buy up the Hilton patent at a cost of £21.50, and to send over large numbers of West of England Puritans and a minister who built and fortified a church on Dover Neck (Belknap, 1, 32). Jealousies, fears, and factions arose between the old settlers and the new comers. Then emissaries from the Bay appeared at the proper time on the Piscataqua (Fry, 37), "to understand the minds of the people and to prepare them", and their report was entirely satisfactory to their principals. They then (1641) got the purchasers of the Hilton patent to put it solemnly under the government of Massachuestts. And now, the time being ripe, and England too distracted with her own internal troubles to interfere, Massachusetts assumed jurisdiction over the New Hampshire settlements (October, 1641). Very soon after Puritans appeared among the settlers and obtained possession of the principal offices, divid- ing among themselves a goodly share of the common lands (Fry, 30). They silenced the Anglican minister at Portsmouth, seized the church, parsonage, and the fifty acres of glebe that had been granted that church by Governor Williams and the people, and in due time turned them over to a Puritan minister. Minister Wheelwright left Exeter and went to Maine.
For nearly one hundred years, or until the capture of Quebec by Wolfe and the subsequent surrender of Canada (1759-63), the development of New Hamp- shire was seriously impaired by the Indian wars, her territory being not only the borderland, but also in the
