Population Trends in Northwestern New England, 1790-1930

Abstract

The first four maps of the series show the movement of population in the towns of New Hampshire and Vermont in the decades between 1790 and I830. This was a period of self-sufficiency in agriculture, when the farmers and their families derived their subsistence chiefly from their farms and sold only the incidental surplus for cash or bartered it for merchandise. Most sections of these states, blessed with the vigor of youth, grew rapidly. The population of Vermont increased in this period from 85,341 to 280,652, that of New Hampshire from 141,899 to 269,328. The greater number of towns gained consistently. In the northern parts of both states most of the losses in numbers occurred between I8IO and I820: the War of 1812, with the fear of British and Indian invasion from Canada, tended not only to restrict immigration into these new and sparsely settled regions but also to persuade many of the more faint-hearted to retrace their steps southward. Out of thirteen Vermont towns facing the border, eight lost in population in this decade. The hard times that followed the war were another influence leading to a loss of population during this decade, particularly in the central and southern sections of the two states, while still more widespread in its effect upon the area was the distress caused by an almost total crop failure in I8I6.2 Although by far the greater number of towns in both states grew constantly during this period, by its end a marked and steady decrease in population had set in in the earlier settled parts. The call of the new lands to the north and sporadic migration from the older communities into western territory accounted for much of this drop. In longoccupied Rockingham County, in the southeastern corner of New Hampshire, a number of towns decreased in population in more than one decade of these forty years, while the southeastern corner of Vermont, the first area in the state settled by white men, was also losing