New Hampshire
New Hampshire is boring, y’all.
I’m sure it’s a lovely place with lots of things happening, but in terms of border history, we’ve seen almost all of these already. So that’s not New Hampshire’s fault, but them never trying to claim all the way to Alaska is their fault.
The southern border: See Massachusetts Bay.
The eastern border: See Massachusetts Bay.
The western border: Two rivers.
The northern border: The height of the land, that always-fun-to-try-to-source-good-lines-to-draw-on-your-map concept.
So we might as well spend this time on the part interesting enough to get an inset. Locally, it’s called The Gore. Vermont was defined as west of the Connecticut and south of 45° north, and New Hampshire was defined as east of Halls Stream down to 45° north (or what the treaty at least admitted was “a line established by Valentine and Collins previous to 1774 as the 45th parallel in latitude” because, as you can see, they missed.) Since there’s a gap between the two rivers there, the border has to jog across to contrinue. (Above is sourced to Van Zandt’s report, page 63)
New Hampshire is a little more interesting in colonial days, but for now we’re moving forward through time, not backward.
Next time: The Old Dominion herself, Virginia.
