In 1751 the township of Holderness had
been asked for and granted. On October 15th, in that year,
His Excellency, Benning Wentworth, laid before the council
a "petition of Thomas Shepard and others, inhabitants
of the Province, praying for a grant of His Majesty's
lands of the contents of six miles square on Pemidgwasset
river, to which the Council did advise and consent. Thomas
Shepard's petition was signed by sixty-four persons, to
whom accordingly the grant was made. The decisive defeat
of the French at Quebec, in 1759, removed that terror
from this region. The land was open for safe occupation.
In 1761 Governor Benning Wentworth issued grants for eighteen
townships. It was under one of these grants that Holderness
was finally settled. It incorporates into a township a
piece of land six miles square. In Holderness it amounted
to eight hundred acres. The charter gave the township
thus erected the name of New Holderness.
The first settler of New Holderness was William Piper
and his wife Susanna. She was John Shepard's daugher.
John Shepard had been a ranger with Robert Rogers, and
eloped with Susanna Smith. When the War of Independence
came on, he purposed to remain neutral, but was arrested
by overzealous patriots and put on parole at Exerter.
This so altered his ideals of neutrality that on being
released he prompltly donned the uniform of the British
service. He was killed in action on shipboard off the
Grand Menan. His daughter Susanna, on her marriage to
William Piper, had her father's lot for dowry. It lay
between Squam Lake and White Oak Pond, on the west side
of the connecting brook. There, in 1763, they build a
cabin and set up housekeeping, and thus began the actual
settlement of Holderness.
