Henniker, NH
Posted by: 
silverquill
N 43° 10.519 W 071° 49.312
19T E 270643 N 4784149
Built in 1787, Henniker's Town Hall also served as the church meetinghouse after the original 1770 log building had burned.
Waymark Code: WM1Q18
Location: New Hampshire, United States
Date Posted: 06/20/2007
Views: 37
Henniker, New Hampshire, is a residential town located along the beautiful, meandering Contoocook River. In the settlement of the land dispute between New Hampshire and Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1740, Henniker was allotted township number 6 in the lines of towns between the Connecticut and Merrimack Rivers. In the Charter of 1768, Governor Wentworth named the town of Henniker in honor of his friend, John Henniker, Esq., a wealthy London merchant of leather and furs.
Tradition states a few settlers arrived in the early 1730's but none stayed due to some Penacook Indian harassment and the French and Indian War. A marker on the north side of Rte 9/202 indicates where the first permanent settler arrived and settled in 1761. On Shaker Hill Road, just off River Road, another historical marker shows where the first framed house was built and the first child was born, both in 1763.
A town meeting was held on November 25, 1768, and Rev. Jacob Rice was hired as the first "gospel minister." In 1770, $20 was voted to build a log meeting house. It was burned ten years later, and a marker indicates the site on Flanders Road.
The present Town Hall, completed in 1787, served as the second church and the town's meeting place.