Hooksett, New Hampshire

Hooksett takes its name from the river it grew around. Accounts differ on the details. One says the name comes from a hook shaped island in the Merrimack, another from early fishermen who called the area Hookline Falls.

For nearly fifty years it was known informally by that name, earlier called Chester Woods and Rowe's Corner, before the state formally incorporated it in June of eighteen twenty-two, carved from the surrounding towns of Chester, Goffstown, and Dunbarton. Mills, ferries, and a brick works rose along the falls. The Hooksett Canal, funded by lottery in seventeen ninety-four, linked the settlement to the great Amoskeag cotton mills downstream in Manchester, threading this small bend of river into the early industrial economy of New England.