Some of the towns in New Hampshire have names that seem pretty straightforward: Manchester is named for the city in England and Washington is named after our first President, but why did they get those names? Some towns are obviously named for people (Westmoreland, Raymond, Hancock) but who were those people? And what about places like Candia: why would a NH town have the same name as a Greek capital?
During his tenure as the director of the New Hampshire Historical Society Elmer Munson Hunt, with the help of NHSL reference librarian Stella Scheckter, researched these questions. His findings were a column on NH Town Names that he wrote for the Manchester Union Leader for many years. Those columns formed the beginning of this fascinating collection of stories about how each town in our state got its name, and in many cases what it was called before.
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