Maps of New Hampshire

Map of New Hampshire county boundaries and county seats

Maps of New Hampshire are an invaluable area of ancestors and family history research, especially if you live faraway from where your ancestor was living. Given that New Hampshire political boundaries sometimes changed, historic maps tend to be crucial in helping you uncover the precise location of your ancestor’s home town, what land they owned, just who their neighbors happen to be, and more.

Maps of New Hampshire generally are likely to be an excellent resource for how to get started with your family tree, simply because they provide significantly valuable information and facts immediately. Maps are usually a major resource of considerable amounts of information on family history.

New Hampshire is a state with excellent map sources, making it possible to follow migration trails with the use of political divisions and geographic features. David A. Cobb, New Hampshire Maps to 1900: An Annotated Checklist (Concord, N.H.: New Hampshire Historical Society, 1981), helps to identify and locate many maps for research purposes.

An excellent, currently published atlas for the entire state is The New Hampshire Atlas and Gazetteer published by DeLorme Publishing in Freeport, Maine. It is continually updated and has excellent cartography of New Hampshire features, including roads (indicating type of surface) and geological features. Earlier versions contain markings for structures, some cemeteries, and churches. Although it is slightly oversized for easy carrying, its usefulness outweighs this hindrance.

Statewide nineteenth-century maps are also excellent. D. H. Hurd and Co., Town and City Atlas of the State of New Hampshire (Boston, 1892) indicates occupants’ names for structures and treats each town on a separate page with close-up maps for more populated areas. Saco Valley Publishing, 76 Main St., Fryeburg, ME 04037, has been reprinting excellent county editions of these in a handy notebook size.

As with other New England states, obtaining a copy of the town’s lotting map (the way land was divided before being granted or sold) can be extremely beneficial in solving genealogical problems. The most comprehensive collection of these can be found at the New Hampshire Records and Archives. The layouts are catalogued by town, and include the numbering process of lots and, in many cases, name of the original proprietor, which can help backtrack land holdings and provide a chain of title for problem solving. Many of these are found in the New Hampshire State Papers as well.

New Hampshire borders Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont and Canada. New Hampshire’s 10 largest cities in New Hampshire  are Manchester, Nashua,  Concord, Derry, Dover, Rochester, Salem, Merrimack, Hudson, Londonderry and Keene.

Learn more about Historical Facts of New Hampshire Counties.

Interactive Map of New Hampshire County Formation History

New Hampshire Map Links

• New Hampshire Digital Map Library (usgwarchives.net)
• Old Historical Maps of New Hampshire (alabamamaps.ua.edu)
• New Hampshire Maps, Atlases & Gazetteers (ancestry.com)
• New Hampshire Maps – The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection (lib.utexas.edu)
• U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918 (ancestry.com)
• American Memory Map Collection: 1500-2004 (memory.loc.gov)
• Old Maps of New Hampshire (old-maps.com)
• NH Map Books (amazon.com)