Along the banks of the 54-foot waterfall on the Merrimack River was a favorite fishing ground for ancient Abenaki tribes as far back as 11,000 years ago. The fish were so plentiful that the Abenaki named the spot Amoskeag, meaning “place of many fish.” The first European settlers in the 1720s gathered inland to the east at a settlement they called Derryfield, near present-day Mammoth Road where the soil was more fertile, following native trails and carving roadways to reach the bountiful Merrimack River.

In the early 1800s, entrepreneur and visionary Samuel Blodget completed a transportation canal around the waterfall, enabling boats to pass north to Concord. The area became an important stop for commerce, as markets were opened from New Hampshire’s frontier North Country south to Boston and beyond. Blodget predicted that the small community of Derryfield would become “the Manchester of America,” a prosperous manufacturing city.

As investors in Boston sought sites for an emerging New England textile industry, Blodget’s prediction came true. Derryfield was renamed Manchester in 1810 and was transformed. The Amoskeag Manufacturing Company began to harness the power of the rushing water to turn the machinery of their textile-making machines. Ezekiel Straw’s planned city of Manchester grew rapidly during the American Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, until it occupied a mile-long stretch along both banks of the Merrimack River. Manchester became a prosperous Victorian-era city with a thriving business district on Elm Street and fashionable homes in the North End and on Hanover Hill.

By the early twentieth century, Amoskeag operated the largest cotton textile mill complex in the world, drawing immigrant workers from such faraway places as Ireland, Canada, Sweden, Scotland, Germany, Poland and Greece. At its peak, just before World War I, the company employed 16,000 people and operated 24,400 looms that produced 471 miles of cloth each day. “Industry has cut the pattern of Manchester” was no exaggeration, and waterpower had provided the basis for that industry. Steam power and electricity sustained the progress, but the Great Depression, the high price of labor and a devastating flood forced the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company to close. The community struggled to recover, earning the nickname “the city that would not die.”

Today, the “Manchester of America” thrives again. Once more there is a prosperous business district on Elm Street. The old mill buildings have been renovated and are filled with business and industry, shops and restaurants, colleges, artist studios and museums. Immigrants from Africa, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe come to the city for a better life, just as the early mill workers did. Visitors come to attend events at the new Verizon Wireless Arena and to see the city’s many cultural attractions. Manchester truly is “the Queen City, where history invites opportunity.”

--Information provided by the Manchester Historic Association
129 Amherst Street, Manchester, NH 03101
603 622-7531
www.manchesterhistoric.org