Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

which threatened to keep New Hampshire under the tutelage of Massachusetts.
The leader of the popular opposition, Benning Wentworth, now became
full governor of Ne Hampshire in 1741, and Massachusetts received a royal
governor of its own. Freed from the burden of this struggle, New Hampshire
flourished and grew apace. At his inauguration, Governor Wentworth prophetically
hailed the final separation of the two colonies as "an event which
. . . will ... be a lasting advantage; will be a means of replenishing your towns
with people, of extending and enlarging your commerce."
With New Hampshire secure from Massachusetts aggression, Governor
Wentworth decider! to safeguard the newly decided-upon western part of the
colony (now Verrn t) for his control by parceling out huge land grants to
that unsettled region (known as "the New Hampshire Grants"). Here, Wentworth
was worried about New York's old claims to jurisdiction over this territory.
Wentworth, '. should be noted, took good care to assign himself a fee
of five hundred acres in each newly designated township. Fortunately, no
feudalistic proprietary was sustained, as the grantees quickly divided and
sold the land. An annual quitrent of one shilling per hundred acres was
demanded by the grantees, but they, typically, found it impossible to collect.
With settlement rapidly developing, the period of transfer of landholdings
from grantees to actual settlers fortunately tended to be brief. New York,
however, continued to make its claim and to hand out conflicting western
New Hampshire grants of its own.
Governor Wentworth began the grants in 1749 by creating the town of
Bennington, and by the 1760s was founding many towns per year (sixty-three
in 1761 alone). Here, considerable absentee speculation served as "wholesale"
and "jobber" intermediaries before the land developed fairly rapidly upon the
settlers. In making the grants, incidentally, Wentworth did not neglect his
own family; at least a dozen Wentworths received handsome gifts, as did
many leading citizens of New Hampshire and New England.
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