Durham is a town in Strafford County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 15,490 at the 2020 census, up from 14,638 at the 2010 census. Durham is home to the University of New Hampshire.
The primary settlement in the town, where 11,147 people resided at the 2020 census, is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as the Durham census-designated place (CDP) and includes the densely populated portion of the town centered on the intersection of New Hampshire Route 108 and Main Street, which includes the university that dominates the town.
History
Durham sits beside Great Bay at the mouth of the Oyster River, an ideal location for people who lived close to the land, like the Western Abenaki and their ancestors who've lived in the region for an estimated 11,000 years. The Shankhassick (now Oyster) River provided shellfish and access to the north woods for hunting and trapping; the sea provided food and access to long-established trade routes between tribes both north and south; and the open meadows provided land easy to cultivate for crops. Wecannecohunt (or Wecohamet), as the settlement was known until English settlers arrived, proved immediately attractive to them, too.
English settlers first colonized the region in 1622 when King James I granted Sir Fernandino Gorges and John Mason "all that part or porcon of that country now commonly called New-England ... between the latitude of forty and fortyeight degrees northerly latitude," including every island within 100 miles of the coast and "all the lands, soyle, grounds, havens, ports, rivers, mines, ... minerals, pearls and pretious stones, woods, queries, marshes waters, fishings, hunting, hawking, fowling, commodities and hereditaments whatsoever." Gorges and Mason agreed to split the vast tract along the Piscataqua River (still known by its Abenaki name pesgatak was, for "the water looks dark"). Gorges took the tract to the east and named it Maine. Mason took the land to west and named it New Hampshire. The region was first named "N'dakinna". It is the traditional ancestral homeland of the Abenaki, Pennacook and Wabanaki peoples.
Colonists first arrived in Wecannecohunt in 1622, the year of the Gorges-Mason grant. They spent their earliest years fishing, cutting, and trapping to sell salted fish, lumber, and fur to European markets. By 1633, colonists were spread along the tidal shores of the Oyster River, and by 1640, they were "in 'recognized possession' of lands up to the fall line." Colonial Durham was first known as the Oyster River Plantation. The English settlers brought non-native livestock aboard their ships, "thousands of cattle, swine, sheep, and horses," requiring them to clear acres merely for pasture. Wecannecohunt's fields, carefully cultivated across centuries, were trampled and their crops destroyed. "The animals exacerbated a host of problems related to subsistence practices, land use, property rights and, ultimately, political authority." When violence between the colonized and the colonizers erupted, livestock were frequently killed. The Abenaki saw them as a direct threat to their food supply.
During King William's War, on July 18, 1694, the fledgling English colonial settlement was attacked in the Raid on Oyster River by French career soldier Claude-Sébastien de Villieu with about 250 Abenaki from Norridgewock under command of their sagamore Bomazeen (or Bomoseen). In all, 104 inhabitants were killed and 27 taken captive, with half the dwellings, including the garrisons, pillaged and burned to the ground.
Oyster River was part of Dover throughout its first century. The Plantation was granted rights as an independent parish in 1716 and incorporated as a township in 1732 when it was renamed Durham. Rev. Hugh Adams claimed to have proposed the name "Durham" in an address to the General Assembly in 1738. Two of the earliest settlers of Dover were William and Edward Hilton, the direct descendants of Sir William de Hilton, Lord of Hilton Castle in County Durham, England, but there is nothing to prove that Durham was named in their honor.
Benjamin Thompson, a descendant of an early settler, bequeathed his assets and family estate, Warner Farm, to the state for the establishment of an agricultural college. Founded in 1866 in Hanover, the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts moved to Durham in 1893 and became the University of New Hampshire in 1923. Thompson Hall, built in 1892 with an iconic clock tower, is named in his honor. Designed in the Romanesque Revival style by the Concord architectural firm of Dow & Randlett, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.