A historical account traces settlement and geography of the New Hampshire Grants and explains how competing colonial land claims produced prolonged legal and physical conflict between new settlers and outside speculators. It recounts organized local resistance by frontier inhabitants, the imposition of rival jurisdictional laws, key military actions in the revolutionary period including border expeditions and sieges, diplomatic maneuvering with external authorities, and the eventual establishment of local civil institutions. The narrative emphasizes the settlers' endurance and the resolution of land disputes that secured their communal autonomy.