Bow, New Hampshire

Bow was chartered in seventeen twenty-seven, and its name describes its geography exactly: the town sits at the bow, or outward curve, of the Merrimack River just south of what would become Concord. Jonathan Wiggin and the other grantees divided the land into parcels for settlers.

Most were farmers. In the eighteen hundreds, the river's power drew saw and grist mills to Bow Mills, one of the town's earliest settled corners. Bow is also remembered as the birthplace of Mary Baker Eddy, born here in eighteen twenty-one, who would go on to found Christian Science and establish one of the only major religions originating in America. The farmhouse is gone, but a plaque and rows of stones mark where the Baker house and barns once stood.