Sutton, New Hampshire: From Perrystown to Sutton

The land you're passing through was first granted in seventeen forty-nine by New Hampshire's Masonian Proprietors to families from Haverhill, Bradford, and Newbury in Massachusetts, and Kingston, New Hampshire. They named it Perrystown, honoring Obadiah Perry, one of the original proprietors.

The French and Indian War stopped any real settlement for nearly two decades. The first permanent settler, David Peaslee, didn't arrive until seventeen sixty-seven. Even then the town grew slowly, with most original proprietors forfeiting their claims. By seventeen eighty-four roughly fifty families had put down roots, and the state incorporated it under a new name. Those later settlers came largely from Sutton, Massachusetts, and they brought that name with them. Today Sutton is quiet hill country, home to a few hundred households tucked into the forests west of Lake Sunapee.