Related Resources

This page includes additional resources on New Hampshire from the Library's website.

American Folklife Center State Resources

American Folklife Center Collections: New Hampshire
American Folklife Center collections from New Hampshire document the diversity of its expressive culture. Its unique collections span folk music from the 1930s to contemporary Veterans oral histories.

Bibliographies and Guides

U.S. State Poets Laureate: New Hampshire
This site provides the names of all current state poets laureate of the United States. It also includes a history of the laureateship in each state, as well the District of Columbia, and attempts to provide a comprehensive listing of all prior state poets laureate. Included is information on the position of State Poet Laureate in New Hampshire.

Exhibitions Featuring New Hampshire

American Treasures of the Library of Congress

The American Treasures of the Library of Congress exhibition is an exhibition of the rarest, most interesting or significant items relating to America's past, drawn from every corner of the world's largest library.

B. B. French’s Diary
The journals of Benjamin Brown French, New Hampshire politician, Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Commissioner of Public Buildings in Washington, D.C., provide a colorful glimpse into nineteenth-century America from the Jacksonian era to the period of Reconstruction. French’s entry for December 25, 1851, recounts the devastating fire that engulfed the Capitol and burned 25,000 volumes in the Congressional Library. But he remarks that “one large room, attached to the main Library, containing all the books on Politics & Religion, was untouched by the fire.”
Port Royal Band Books
In July 1861, cornetist Gustavus W. Ingals was commissioned to organize selected New Hampshire and Massachusetts musicians to become the band of the 3rd new Hampshire Regiment. It became one of the finest such ensembles and is now best remembered as the Port Royal Band due to an extensive duty tour at Port Royal Island, South Carolina. These items belong to a rare set of part books copied and used by the band during the period 1861–1865.
A Shaker Community
The first English Shakers arrived in New York in 1774, eventually attracted a large following, and established more than twenty communities, like this one at Canterbury, New Hampshire. Emphasizing the importance of inner, spiritual “vision,” the Shakers—not unlike other dissenting religious sects and communities of their time—tried to create an enclave protected from the chaos and disorder that they believed had come to characterize American life. Foster’s key at the right of the page lists the function of each building.

A Century of Creativity - The MacDowell Colony 1907–2007

Since 1907, the MacDowell Colony has offered a creative sanctuary to artists, writers, and composers. Founded by American composer Edward MacDowell and his wife Marian, the Colony's underlying philosophy is that artists working in different disciplines can benefit from contact with one another. This exhibition, drawn from collections across the Library, provides an opportunity to appreciate the MacDowell experience, from its most recent fellows to its earliest colonists.

Railroad Map of New Hampshire, 1894
Recommended as a quiet little town in lovely country that had not been invaded by "the summer people,"Peterborough, New Hampshire, became the MacDowells summer home in 1896 when they bought an old farm on the outskirts of town. Peterborough became the couple's refuge from their hectic new life in New York. MacDowell would frequently express the desire to "get back to my farm and begin life again," after he began teaching at Columbia University.

The Civil War in America

The Civil War in America assembles more than 200 unique items, many of which have never been seen by the public, to commemorate the sesquicentennial of this nation’s greatest military and political upheaval. Drawing from hundreds of thousands of items from across many collections of the Library of Congress, the materials included in this exhibition attest to the valor, sacrifices, emotions, and accomplishments of those in both the North and South whose lives were affected by the bitter conflict of 1861–1865.

Benjamin Brown French (Biography)
An acquaintance of twelve consecutive presidents, from Andrew Jackson to Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Brown French (1800–1870) was born in Chester, New Hampshire, to Daniel and Mercy French. Following his marriage to Elizabeth Richardson in 1825, he became active in politics, serving as a representative in the New Hampshire legislature between 1831 and 1833...

Creating the United States

Imagination and vision played critical roles in the creative act of forming a self-governing United States of America. The collections of the Library of Congress are unquestionably the worlds best source for documenting that process. This exhibition offers a remarkable opportunity to learn in a fresh new way how the founding documents that emerged from this period were forged out of insight, invention, and creativity, as well as collaboration and much compromise.

Celebrating the Federal Constitution
The federal Constitution was to go into effect once nine states had ratified it. After New Hampshire and Virginia became the ninth and tenth states to ratify the new federal Constitution in June 1788, Pennsylvania nationalists held a parade in Philadelphia to celebrate the establishment of the new federal republic. New York followed suit in July 1788, but Rhode Island and North Carolina did not join until after the 1789 formation of the new government.

Language of the Land: Journeys Into Literary America

From Robert Frost's New England farms to John Steinbeck's California valley to Eudora Welty's Mississippi Delta, authors have described the American landscape to evoke a strong sense of place. They have peopled our land with memorable characters and woven into their works the regional traits of a dynamic culture. Using the metaphor of a journey, Language of the Land: Journey into Literary America examines the following literary heritage though maps, photographs, and the works of American authors from a variety of periods.

Mapping a Growing Nation: From Independence to Statehood

Mapping a Growing Nation: From Independence to Statehood comprises maps of the northeastern and southeastern regions of the United States. Over time, maps of all fifty states will be included in this online exhibition.

First Map of the State of New Hampshire Printed in the United States, 1795
Situated between the states of Vermont and Maine in New England, the state of New Hampshire ratified the Constitution on June 21, 1788, and became the ninth state admitted to the Union. This map was engraved in 1794 by Samuel Lewis (1754–1822), a Philadelphia-based engraver, for Mathew Carey’s 1795 American Atlas, which was the first atlas of the United States published in the United States. Lewis’s map includes county and town boundaries, road networks in the state, mountain ranges, and a curious note indicating that the eastern New Hampshire’s “White Hills appear many leagues off at sea, like white clouds just rising above the horizon.”

Law Library

The Guide to Law Online: New Hampshire
The Guide to Law Online, prepared by the Law Library of Congress Public Services Division, is an annotated guide to sources of information on government and law available online. It includes selected links to useful and reliable sites for legal information on U.S states and territories, including New Hampshire.

Resources for Teachers

The Library of Congress offers classroom materials and professional development to help teachers effectively use primary sources from the Library's vast digital collections in their teaching. Find Library of Congress lesson plans and more that meet Common Core standards, state content standards, and the standards of national organizations.

Features & Activities

Primary Sources by State: New Hampshire
The Library of Congress has rich documents and artifacts from every state, the U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia.

Lesson Plans

Exploring Community Through Local History: Oral Stories, Landmarks and Traditions
Students explore the local history of the community in which they live through written and spoken stories; through landmarks such as buildings, parks, restaurants, or businesses; and through traditions such as food, festivals and other events of the community or of individual families.
Local History: Mapping My Spot
Students create their town’s history for coming generations and place themselves on the map in a literal as well as figurative sense, by producing portions of an updated version of an early twentieth century panoramic map from the Digital Collections.

Today in History

The following dates in history feature significant events in New Hampshire's history as highlighted in the Library of Congress' collections.

April 20
American sculptor Daniel Chester French was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, on April 20, 1850, the son of a lawyer who later became a judge and a government official.
November 23
Franklin Pierce, fourteenth president of the United States, was born on November 23, 1804, in Hillsboro, New Hampshire. Like his predecessor James K. Polk, Pierce was a little-known figure retired from national politics when the Democratic Party summoned him to be its candidate for president.
December 13
On December 13, 1769, Dartmouth College obtained its royal charter.

Veterans History Project

The Veterans History Project (VHP) collects and preserves the remembrances of American war veterans and civilian workers who supported them. Click on the link below to locate veterans from New Hampshire.

Veterans History Project: New Hampshire

New Hampshire: State Resource Guide

History, Humanities & Social Sciences: Ask a Librarian