New Hampshire, one of the six New England states and one of the smaller states of the United States. The state is bordered on the north by the Canadian province of Québec, on the east by Maine and the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by Massachusetts, and on the west by Vermont. Concord is the capital of New Hampshire. Manchester is the largest city.
Settled only three years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts, New Hampshire was one of the original 13 colonies. As the ninth state to ratify the Constitution of the United States, New Hampshire cast the decisive vote on June 21, 1788, that put the Constitution into effect.
New Hampshire has within its boundaries the highest mountains in New England, countless lakes, hundreds of streams and brooks, and large areas of unspoiled woodlands. Tourists have flocked to New Hampshire since the late 1800s. Despite its rural appearance, New Hampshire has long been an industrial state. Two of its early industries, the manufacture of shoes and of textiles, started in the homes of the earliest settlers.
New Hampshire is known as the Granite State because of its extensive granite formations and deposits. The state was named by Captain John Mason, who in the early 17th century received one of the first land grants in what was to become New Hampshire. He named the area after the English county of Hampshire, where he had spent time as a youth. The Official State Website is http://www.nh.gov/
The destruction of courthouses greatly affects genealogists in every way. No only are these historic structures torn from our lives, so are the records they housed: marriage, wills, probate, land records, and others. Once destroyed they are lost forever. Even if they have been placed on mircofilm, computers and film burn too. The most heartbreaking side of this is the fact that many of our courthouses are destroyed at the hands of arsonist. However, not all records were lost.
Below is a list of New Hampshire Counties and the years the Courthouses were subjected to a disaster. This does NOT mean that ALL RECORDS were lost. Often, folks took their documents again in for recording after a disaster and later deeds will contain long chains of title, etc.
Coos County - Fire damaged thirty-three volumes of the pre-1887 deeds and all of the probate records before that date. Damaged deeds were transcribed when possible and are retained in the courthouse. Seven volumes of Grafton deeds relating to Coos County before formation are kept in a separate series with separate indexes covering 1772–1803.
Sullivan County - Early deeds were damaged by fire in 1827. A separate series of “burned deeds,” consisting of copies of surviving portions of the burned volumes with a separate index, is at the registry.
