Benning Wentworth in the context of Portsmouth, New Hampshire

The New Hampshire Grants or Benning Wentworth Grants were land grants made between 1749 and 1764 by the colonial governor of the Province of New Hampshire, Benning Wentworth. The land grants, totaling about 135 (including 131 towns), were made on land claimed by New Hampshire west of the Connecticut River, territory that was also claimed by the Province of New York. The resulting dispute led to the eventual establishment of the Vermont Republic, which later became the U.S. state of Vermont.

The Province of New Hampshire was an English colony and later a British province in New England. It corresponds to the territory between the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers on the eastern coast of North America. It was named after the English county of Hampshire in southern England by Captain John Mason in 1629, its first named proprietor. In 1776, the province established an independent state and government, the State of New Hampshire, and joined with twelve other colonies to form the United States.

Europeans first settled New Hampshire in the 1620s, and the province consisted for many years of a small number of communities along the seacoast, Piscataqua River, and Great Bay. In 1641 the communities were organized under the government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, until Charles II issued a colonial charter for the province and appointed John Cutt as President of New Hampshire in 1679. After a brief period as a separate province, the territory was absorbed into the Dominion of New England in 1686. Following the collapse of the unpopular Dominion, on October 7, 1691 New Hampshire was again separated from Massachusetts and organized as an English crown colony. Its charter was enacted on May 14, 1692, during the coregency of William and Mary, the joint monarchs of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Between 1699 and 1741, the province's governor was often concurrently the governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. This practice ended completely in 1741, when Benning Wentworth was appointed governor. Wentworth laid claim on behalf of the province to lands west of the Connecticut River, east of the Hudson River, and north of Massachusetts, issuing controversial land grants that were disputed by the Province of New York, which also claimed the territory. These disputes resulted in the eventual formation of the Vermont Republic and the U.S. state of Vermont.

Concord (/ˈkɒŋkərd/) is the capital city of the U.S. state of New Hampshire and the seat of Merrimack County. As of the 2020 United States census the population was 43,976, making it the 3rd most populous city in New Hampshire after Manchester and Nashua.

The area was first settled by Europeans in 1659. On January 17, 1725, the Province of Massachusetts Bay granted the Concord area as the Plantation of Penacook, and it was incorporated on February 9, 1734, as the Town of Rumford. Governor Benning Wentworth gave the city its current name in 1765 following a boundary dispute with the neighboring town of Bow; the name was meant to signify the new harmony between the two towns. In 1808, Concord was named the official seat of state government, and the State House was completed in 1819; it remains the oldest U.S. state capitol wherein the legislature meets in its original chambers.

The territory of the present United States state of New Hampshire has a colonial history dating back to the 1620s. This history is significantly bound to that of the neighboring Massachusetts, whose colonial precursors either claimed the New Hampshire territory, or shared governors with it. First settled in the 1620s under a land grant to John Mason, the colony consisted of a small number of settlements near the seacoast before growing further inland in the 18th century. Mason died in 1635, and the colonists appropriated a number of his holdings. Thomas Roberts served as the last Colonial Governor of the Dover Colony before it became part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1641 the New Hampshire colonists agreed to be ruled by Massachusetts Bay Colony, which also claimed the territory. Massachusetts governed the New Hampshire settlements until 1680, when it became the royally chartered Province of New Hampshire. In 1686 the territory became part of the Dominion of New England, which was effectively disbanded in 1689 following the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England. After an interregnum under de facto rule from Massachusetts, Samuel Allen, who had acquired the Mason land claims, became governor. From 1699 to 1741 the governorships of New Hampshire and the Province of Massachusetts Bay were shared.

Boundary disputes between the two colonies prompted King George II to appoint separate governors in 1741, commissioning Portsmouth native Benning Wentworth as governor. In 1775, with the advent of the American Revolutionary War, the province's last royal governor, John Wentworth, fled the colony. Under a state constitution drafted in early 1776, Meshech Weare was chosen the first President of the independent state of New Hampshire.