GRAFTON COUNTY NH - History and Genealogy

BRIEF HISTORY OF GRAFTON CO., NEW HAMPSHIRE
Grafton County is one of 10 counties in New Hampshire. The county is in the Lebanon metro area. Extending far into its northern limits lies the famous White Mountain region, while in its southern and central parts, and all along the Connecticut, are a thousand scenes of storied or of unsung loveliness. Grafton County was originally known as "The Fifth," established by an act of the Colonial legislature passed March 19, 1771, in which it was made to contain "all the lands in the Province not comprehended in the other counties," (viz: Hillsborough, Rockingham, Cheshire and Strafford) its name being given in honor of Augustus Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton. This act created a county which was an immense tract of land, extending south from what is now the Canada line for a distance of nearly 150 miles. This territory was divided as early as November 27, 1800, when the township of Burton [whose name was changed to Albany] was annexed to Strafford county. Three years later, December 24, 1803, the whole of the northern half of Grafton county was set off to form the new county of Coos, and finally on June 18, 1805, the area was reduced once again by the annexation of the whole of a tract known as "Nash and Sawyer's Location" to Coos County. After all these reductions, by an act of the legislature, passed January 2, 1829, the boundaries of the county were fixed, from which since there has been made no material change. This place's the county's 1,463 square miles of territory between 43 degrees 27' and 44 degrees 22' north latitude, and between 71 degrees 20' and 72 degrees 20' longitude west from Greenwich, bounded north by Coos county, east by Coos, Carroll and Belknap counties, south by Merrimack and Sullivan Counties, and west by the west bank of the Connecticut river, its greatest length being fifty-eight miles and its greatest breadth thirty miles. It is divided into thirty-nine towns, twenty-nine of which were granted under King George II -- eleven in the second year of his unfortunate reign, in 1761 -- and ten under the State government. In the northern section are mountains belonging to the White Mountain range, Franconia mountains and Carrigain mountain; a little to the southwest, in Benton, is Moosilauke, towering to an altitude of 4,811 feet... while at the east and southeast is a part of the Whiteface, in Waterville, and the Campton mountains in Campton and vicinity. The southern section, though rough and broken, partkes more of a hilly than a mountainous nature. In the western section it is watered by the Connecticut and its tributaries, the largest of which are the Lower and Wild Ammonoosuc rivers, and in the norther part, and Mascoma in the southern section. The Pemigewasset and its branches water the central portion. The principal bodies of water are part of Squam Lake in the southeastern section, Newfound Lake in the southern, and Mascoma in the southwestern portion. [From "Gazetteer of Grafton Co NH, by Hamilton Child; Syracuse NY, 1886]. The county seat is Haverhill NH.

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