The history and development of Manchester, New Hampshire, is largely intertwined with the history of the Industrial Revolution in America, specifically the history of the company that built Manchester's textile mills: the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company. 

The area that today is Manchester was originally inhabited by members of the Pennacook Tribe, who frequented the Amoskeag Falls on the Merrimack River. The name Amoskeag comes from the Abnaki word meaning "Place of Many Fish". This area of waterfalls and rapids stretched for about ½ mile above and around the Fishing Islands, where Native peoples had fished for thousands of years.

The first Europeans to settle in the area were Scots-Irish immigrants who began to arrive in the 1720s. Many of the first settlers were farmers, and the area was chartered as a town in 1751 under the name of Derryfield. The town grew slowly for the first 50 years, but that would soon change as a result of the Industrial Revolution. 

The 54-foot drop in the Merrimack River at Amoskeag Falls presented the area with tremendous water power potential. Local entrepreneur Samuel Blodget saw that potential and, after visiting the industrial city of Manchester, England, believed that Derryfield could become the "Manchester of America". Following his death in 1810, the townspeople decided to rename the town Manchester in honor of that vision. 

The first mill operation to develop in Manchester was a small water powered cotton spinning operation on the west side of the river. The company was called the Amoskeag Cotton and Woolen Manufacturing Company and operated three small mills in the 1820s. 

Around this time, a group of wealthy men from the Boston area who had originally made their fortunes in shipping were looking for new investment opportunities, as the New England maritime economy was in decline following the War of 1812. They decided to invest in textile manufacturing and established the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1813.

This new system developed in Waltham placed all the steps needed to produce cloth, from carding raw wool to spinning, dyeing the yarn, and weaving under one roof. This led to much greater production and improved profitability. The Waltham mill quickly became much larger than any of its competition, leading the same investors to form the Merrimack Manufacturing Company in the City of Lowell in 1820. 

After Lowell, these investors set their sights on Manchester. They were familiar with the factory operations at the Amoskeag Cotton and Woolen Manufacturing Company and were impressed by the water power potential at Amoskeag Falls, which far exceeded that of the Pawtucket Falls at Lowell. So, in 1831 they bought out the original investors and incorporated the company as the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company.

Next, they purchased land from over a dozen local families, acquiring over 15,000 acres of land on the east side of the river. This enabled the company to control both the development of the mill complex as well as the development of the city to support it.

Construction of the millyard took place over an 80-year period. Eventually, there would be 30 major factory buildings, two canals, and many smaller buildings, including storehouses, picker houses, warehouses, and dye houses, equaling 8 million sq. feet of floor space. At its height, the Amoskeag consisted of over a mile of mills on the east side of the river and two mill complexes on the west side. The company also built housing for the workers to the east of the millyard, much of which still exists today.

The Amoskeag Company laid out Manchester's streets on a grid system, then sold over 14,000 surplus acres through land sales from 1838 to 1845. The company gave parkland to the city and sold lots at low cost to enable the construction of municipal buildings, schools, and churches. Shops and businesses began to line Elm Street in the 1840s as the center of Manchester's retail district.

In this way, the company controlled how the city of Manchester developed. Their goal was to create a city that would be attractive to employees and make people want to come to work at Amoskeag. The result was Manchester: the largest planned city in New England and a true success story of early urban planning in America. 

The city grew rapidly, from just over 10,000 residents in 1846 when Manchester was incorporated to 20,000 in 1860. As the population grew, the city matured. By 1875, Manchester had two daily newspapers, eighteen churches, eleven restaurants, eight hotels, nine banks, and scores of retail stores. By 1920, the city boasted more than twenty theaters. Although the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company remained the major employer for its entire existence, many other types of businesses, including shoe manufacturing, cigar making, harness makers, and department stores, sprung up to provide employment.

The Amoskeag Manufacturing Company primarily produced a wide range of textiles – mostly cotton, but there were also some wool and linen operations. At its height in 1912, the company made 5 million yards of cloth per week, equal to 150,000 miles of material per year, and employed over 17,000 workers. 

Immigrants were an integral part of Amoskeag's success. The Irish were the first large immigrant population to come to Manchester, beginning in the 1840s. They helped build the canals and mill buildings and work the machinery in the mills, joining the men and women from farms in the area who served as the first mill workers. French Canadians began coming to Manchester in large numbers in the 1870s and, by 1890, accounted for one-third of the city's population. A section of the West Side became known as "Le Petite Canada" or Little Canada because of the strong Franco-American presence there. Many other nationalities, including Germans, Russians, Greeks, Poles, and Lithuanians, were eventually represented. 

Following World War I, the company began to see a decline. Competition from newer, more efficient southern mills, which also had cheaper labor, hurt Amoskeag, which ran on antiquated equipment. Hard times continued for the company through the next decade. The AMC shut down operations in September 1935 and filed for bankruptcy in December. A devastating flood in March 1936 caused $2.5 million in damage, and in July, the bankruptcy court ordered immediate liquidation with the assets set to be sold at auction. 

The city feared that Amoskeag would be bought by foreign investors who would gut the buildings and ship the textile machinery overseas. If this happened, the Amoskeag Millyard would be left as a ghost town, spelling disaster for Manchester. To prevent this, city business leaders joined forces and began raising money to prevent the property from going to auction. They incorporated Amoskeag Industries, Inc., miraculously raised $5 million in 10 days, and took over the entire Amoskeag Millyard. They advertised to attract new and diversified industries to the city, and within 18 months, 40 new industries operated in the millyard. By the 1950s, 132 different businesses called Manchester home.

Thanks to the efforts of Amoskeag Industries, the millyard was once again a thriving manufacturing center. Many Amoskeag workers returned to the millyard, now working for new companies such as Waumbec, Manchester Knitted Fashions, Chicopee Manufacturing Company, and Pandora.

The millyard saw another decline in the last decades of the twentieth century. A federally-funded urban renewal project in the late 1960s resulted in the demolition of about 25% of the 5.5 million square feet of floor space, and the canals were filled in. As manufacturing companies closed their doors in the 1960s and 70s, much of the millyard became vacant. 

In 1981, inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen purchased buildings in the millyard that would serve as the headquarters of DEKA, his engineering and invention company. Kamen continued to buy property over the next decade. He aimed to "bring the area to a point where it has a large enough high-tech base that it starts developing itself." Over time, he and developer John Madden convinced the city to loosen zoning regulations and allow for non-industrial and mixed use of the area.

Progress was slow, but the millyard attracted interest over time. The University of New Hampshire opened its Manchester campus in 1986. The Waumbec Mill was purchased by Brady Sullivan Properties in 1996 and converted into office space. Their success inspired the company to acquire and renovate other mill buildings, like the Jefferson Mill, in 2002. As more mill buildings became renovated and occupied, even more companies became attracted to the millyard, which helped revitalize other areas of Manchester, bringing new shops and restaurants to Elm Street and downtown. 

Today, the Amoskeag Millyard is a flourishing center for a wide variety of businesses. Nearly 200 years after the beginnings of the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, the "mile of mills" that stretches along the Merrimack River still anchors the city of Manchester firmly to its industrial past.

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Joe English Hill in New Boston is a prominent hill with a distinctive shape. It is named after a Native American who resided in the area and was known for his friendship with the English settlers that lived close to modern-day Nashua. Despite this, he was considered an accomplished warrior and hunter and was given the name 'Joe English' by his fellow Indigenous Americans because of this peculiarity. By 1705 the Natives began to worry about settler encroachment and began to plan an attack. They soon became worried that Joe would inform the English of their hostile intentions and set about to kill him first. They set about their attack, coming across him on the Piscataquog River one twilight. He escaped the initial onslaught and ran up the large hill east of the river. Knowing he couldn't outrun them for long, he devised a plan to utilize the geography of the hill to his advantage. As he approached the summit, he slowed to force his pursuers to quicken their pace. Just before the precipice, he leaped behind a large rock. As darkness had set in, and because the group was riddled with adrenaline knowing how close they were to capturing Joe, they failed to notice the abrupt 100-foot cliff face they were running to. And with a final scream of panic from the group, Joe had escaped.

By the early 1700s, England was heavily deforested. So cutting white pine with a diameter of one foot or more was prohibited in New Hampshire to ensure an ample supply of masts for the British Navy. This was mostly ignored until 1767 when a series of enforcements upon settlers ignoring the ban became unpopular. All of this came to a boil on April 14th, 1772, when a county sheriff and his deputy were charged with arresting the most serious offenders in Weare. As word spread of the impending arrests, more than twenty men descended upon the Inn where the sheriff and his deputy were staying and engaged them in a violent beating. The men eventually chased the sheriff and deputy back to Goffstown. The Pine Tree Riot preceded the Boston Tea Party by 18 months and is considered by some as the true start of the American Revolution.

Mast Rd. in Goffstown derives its name from the fact it was the path the British used to haul the large white pines that were felled to the North West. They would eventually make their way to the coast before being shipped back to England to be used as masts for British Royal Navy ships.

The Manchester Coal and Ice Company harvested ice from Massabesic Lake in Auburn from 1896 to 1960. This ice was considered some of the purest available and was shipped via rail to Boston, where it was then sent on fast clipper ships worldwide.