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For the historical student the region affords much of interest.  Here, in the village of Hampton, in the year 1638, in the month of October, settled the Reverend Stephen Batchelder [Bachiler] and his followers, intent to serve God in their own way and establish homes in the wilderness.  The river and adjoining country was then known as Winnicunnett.  The settlers, for the most part, came from Norfolk, England, and so desirable did they find their adopted home that many descendants of the original grantees occupy to-day the land opened and cleared by their ancestors.  In this town, in 1657, settled Ebenezer Webster, the direct progenitor of the Great Expounder, and here the family remained for several generations.

Within the limits of the old township, which was bounded on the south by the present Massachusetts line, on the north by Portsmouth and Exeter, and extended ten miles inland, were included the territory of some half dozen of the adjoining townships of to-day.  Here lived Meshach Weare, who guided the New Hampshire ship of state through the troublous times of the Revolution.  Over yonder, near the site of the first log meeting-house, is pointed out the gambrel-roofed house of General Jonathan Moulton, the great land-owner.  He it was, in the good old colony days, who drove a very large and fat ox from his township of Moultonborough, and delivered it to the jovial Governor Wentworth as a present to his excellency, and said there was nothing to pay.  When the governor insisted on making some return, General Moulton informed him that there was an ungranted gore of land adjoining his earlier grant which he would accept.  In this manner he came into possession of the town of New Hampton—­a very ample return for the ox; at least, so asserts tradition.

Colonel Christopher Toppan, in those early days, was largely engaged in ship-building.  For many years the people of Hampton were employed in domestic and foreign commerce, and it was not until the advent of the railroad that Hampton surrendered its dreams of commercial aggrandizement.

One road leads up the coast to Rye and Portsmouth; another, through a most charming country, to Exeter; another, to Salisbury and Newburyport, and many others inland in every direction.

Boar’s Head is the best base from which to operate to rediscover the whole adjoining territory.

The first house on the Head was built, in 1808, by Daniel Lamprey, whose son, Jeremiah Lamprey, began to entertain guests about 1820.  The first public house in the vicinity, a part of the present Boar’s Head House, was built, in 1826, by David Nudd and associates.  From them it came, in 1865, into the possession of Stebbins Hitchcock Dumas, who, nineteen years before, had commenced hotel life at the Phenix, in Concord.  Under Mr. Dumas’ management the house has grown steadily in size as well as in popularity, until to-day it ranks as one of the great seaside caravansaries of the Atlantic coast.