The New Hampshire Grants
See also: New Hampshire GrantsAs early as 1749, Benning Wentworth, New Hampshire's governor, was selling land grants in the area west of the Connecticut River, to which New Hampshire had always laid somewhat dubious claim. Many of these grants were sold at relatively low prices to land speculators, with some land kicked back to Wentworth. In 1764, King George issued an order resolving the competing claims of New York and New Hampshire in favor of New York. New York, which had also issued land grants that overlapped some of those sold by Wentworth, insisted that holders of the Wentworth grants pay a fee to New York to have their grants validated. As this fee approached the original purchase price, and many of the holders were land-rich and cash-poor, there was a great deal of resistance to this demand. By 1769 the situation in the Grants had deteriorated to the point where surveyors and other figures of New York authority were being physically threatened and driven from the area.
Read more about this topic: Ethan Allen
Famous quotes containing the words hampshire and/or grants:
“A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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