List of counties in New Hampshire

Counties of New Hampshire
Coös Grafton Carroll Belknap Strafford Merrimack Sullivan Cheshire Hillsborough Rockingham
Location	State of New Hampshire
Number	10
Populations	31,212 (Coös) – 406,678 (Hillsborough)
Areas	369 square miles (960 km^2) (Strafford) – 1,801 square miles (4,660 km^2) (Coös)
Government	County government
Subdivisions	cities, towns, townships, villages, unincorporated territories, census designated place

This is a list of counties in New Hampshire.

There are ten counties in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. Five of the counties were created in 1769, when New Hampshire was still an English colony and not a state, during the first subdivision of the state into counties. The last counties created were Belknap County and Carroll County, in 1840.

The majority of New Hampshire's counties were named for prominent British or American people or geographic locations and features. Only one county's name originates in a Native American language: Coös County, named for an Algonquian word meaning "small pines".

The counties tend to be smaller in land area towards the southern end of the state, where New Hampshire population is concentrated, and larger in land area in the less populous north.^[1][2]

The FIPS county code is the five-digit Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code which uniquely identifies counties and county equivalents in the United States. The three-digit number is unique to each individual county within a state, but to be unique within the entire United States, it must be prefixed by the state code. This means that, for example, while Belknap County, New Hampshire is 001, Addison County, Vermont and Alachua County, Florida are also 001. To uniquely identify Belknap County, New Hampshire, one must use the state code of 33 plus the county code of 001; therefore, the unique nationwide identifier for Belknap County, New Hampshire is 33001. The links in the column FIPS County Code are to the Census Bureau Info page for that county.^[3]

List

County	FIPS Code [3]	County Seat [4]	Created [4]	Formed from [5]	Etymology [2]	Population [6]	Area [4][6]	Map
Belknap County	001	Laconia	1840	Parts of Merrimack County and Strafford County.	Jeremy Belknap (1744-1798), early New Hampshire historian.	60,641	401 sq mi (1,039 km^2)
Carroll County	003	Ossipee	1840	Part of Strafford County.	Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832), the last surviving signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence.	47,285	934 sq mi (2,419 km^2)
Cheshire County	005	Keene	1769	One of five original counties.	English county of Cheshire.	75,909	708 sq mi (1,834 km^2)
Coos County	007	Lancaster	1803	Part of Grafton County.	An Algonquian word meaning "small pines".	31,212	1,801 sq mi (4,665 km^2)
Grafton County	009	North Haverhill	1769	One of five original counties.	Duke Augustus Henry Fitzroy of Grafton (1735-1811), a Prime Minister of Great Britain (1768-1770).	89,320	1,714 sq mi (4,439 km^2)
Hillsborough County	011	Manchester and Nashua	1769	One of five original counties.	Marquess Wills Hill of Downshire (1718-1793), known in America as the earl of Hillsborough, who served as the first Secretary of State for the Colonies.	406,678	876 sq mi (2,269 km^2)
Merrimack County	013	Concord	1823	Parts of Hillsborough County and Rockingham County.	The Merrimack River.	147,994	934 sq mi (2,419 km^2)
Rockingham County	015	Brentwood	1769	One of five original counties.	Marquess Charles Watson-Wentworth of Rockingham (1730-1782), a two-time Prime Minister of Great Britain (1765-1766, 1782).	301,777	695 sq mi (1,800 km^2)
Strafford County	017	Dover	1769	One of five original counties.	Earl William Wentworth of Strafford (1626-1695), an English noble who owned colonial lands.	126,825	369 sq mi (956 km^2)
Sullivan County	019	Newport	1827	Part of Cheshire County.	John Sullivan (1740-1795), the third and fifth governor of New Hampshire (1786-1788, 1789-1790).	42,967	537 sq mi (1,391 km^2)

References

1. Stackpole, Everett Schermerhorn (1916). History of New Hampshire. The American Historical Society.
2. "New Hampshire Counties". New Hampshire Almanac. Retrieved 2007-07-24.
3. "EPA County FIPS Code Listing". US Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved 2007-07-24.
4. "NACo - Find a county". National Association of Counties. Archived from the original on 2007-07-11. Retrieved 2007-07-24.
5. "New Hampshire Counties". The NHGenWeb Project. Archived from the original on 2007-07-13. Retrieved 2007-07-24.
6. "New Hampshire QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau". State & County QuickFacts. Retrieved 2016-04-24.