New Hampshire Crystal Door Knob

New Hampshire, through the mid-19th century, New Hampshire was an active center of abolitionism, and fielded close to 32,000 soldiers for the Union during the U.S. Civil War.

After the war, the state saw rapid industrialization and population growth, becoming a center of textile manufacturing, shoemaking, and papermaking;

the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester was at one time the largest cotton textile plant in the world.

The Merrimack and Connecticut rivers were lined with industrial mills, most of which employed workers from Canada and Europe; 

French Canadians formed the most significant influx of immigrants, and today roughly a quarter of all New Hampshire residents claim French American ancestry, second only to Maine.