Talk:Littleton, New Hampshire

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There needs to be an article on Little Coin Company. íslenska hurikein #12 _(samtal) 17:43, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Settlement date

While the area was settled as early as 1769, it wasn't incorporated as "Littleton" until 1784. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 17:24, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I follow what you are saying, but the category allows for a late incorporation. The original category didn't seem to. In other words, a very late incorporation doesn't mean that the area wasn't settled then. It seems to me that we need this category to allow for the later incorporation dates that being American (as opposed to British colonial) required. In the colonial days incorporation and settlement dates were nearly concurrent. Student7 18:47, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I see what you're saying, but "settlement" is so imprecise. Technically, the area was settled long before 1769. What's so important about Europeans deciding to live there? Is that more notable than the first official document we have - the incorporation? Speaking of which, finding documentation for "settling" an area by Europeans is pretty imprecise as well - I suspect documents saying "John Doe and family decided to live here and built a house" are pretty rare. Just my 2 cents :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 19:19, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

You have a good point. Are you willing to take on the higher level categories? This probably ought to be discussed more widely. The area was mostly vacant of permanent Native American Settlements except for the Coos county area. Kind of a summer hunting area.

But I think we should all discuss this before it goes much further using both "date settlement" and "settlements ...date." This affects dozens if not hundreds of articles. What you are saying is the date must be incorporation. "Settlers" don't count. I guess I can live with that. I'm thinking that the category could be defined a little clearer. Maybe someone could be persuaded to write a bot to right everything!  :) Student7 19:39, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I think I have changed my mind. I suspect if we look at foreign lands we will find multiple "settlements" by multiple peoples. It's not so much "European," it's just that it was settled as town x, described by some document. It could have been settled earlier (different name) by Abenakis, or even earlier Native Americans, multiple times. I think we can find that "Persia" was settled by Parthians, Persians, Greeks, Phoenicians, Capadocians, etc. etc. multiple times under different state names. City names changed as well. Okay, mostly not here. But I can live with earlier, overlapping settlement dates by Amerinds. Maybe even Vikings!  :) The English determined boundaries for a time. We can aim toward separate settlement dates by colonists. Your problem with this arises when Europeans settle in an area already inhabited by Amerinds and displace them. I think deliberate settlement under a charter can and should be recognized.

When it comes to Quebec settlement, for example, nearly everyone had a Miq'mac ancestor someplace, so Amerinds were mixed in with other settlers, if only by descent. Student7 01:14, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

My concern here is verifiability. We can pinpoint an incorporation date - it's on the public documents. A charter date doesn't mean that someone moved in - NH towns are famous for multiple charters before settlers arrived. And as for "settled" date, that too is imprecise. I favor keeping charter dates as the "date settled". -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 01:47, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Good point! Monroe, for example, was poached on for awhile. The original poachers were expelled by the owners when they found out. My concern is that using corporation dates favors (since age is an attribute here!) colonial-founded towns who had near synchronous settlement and encorporation dates. This bias is then, in favor of (in New England) southern NH and VT and Maine and NY. By a rather large factor sometimes. 20 years for Littleton. Since Monroe split from it's original town, the gap is huge. Mid-19th century. This seems preposterous to me. I'm going to check other countries. Let's face it, they didn't bother with such niceties as "encorporation" in the "good old" days in the mid-East and Europe. Why pin ourselves to something artificial like a piece of paper when other countries aren't (because they can't)? Also, this seems to favor the very bias your were attempting to avoid. If they can come up with an Abenaki settlement someplace, there won't be a piece of paper. We will have to take archaeologists estimates on their date of "settlement." Student7 15:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Bias in favor of "a piece of paper" is what wikipedia is all about :)

I'm not sure how using incorporation dates "favors" southern towns - they all have incorporation dates. And of course the southern ones were settled earlier. But how is that "favoring"? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 16:36, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Colonial incorporation didn't require many or maybe any settlers prior to issuing the encorporating piece of paper. So their dates are not just earlier. They are way early. After states took control, they required a serious attempt at settlement demonstrated by number of actual settlers. Sometimes this took time. So there may be a huge lag between "settlement" and an actual piece of paper issued by the state, putting the dates far later for northern settlements, though with no fewer settlers than their southern counterparts.

Looked at foreign settlements. Some places they just didn't bother with - Troy (I think) and Tyre, for example. Couldn't separate fact from fiction and archaeology wasn't much help. But most places have settlement dates, some millenia BCE. And no piece of paper. Just archaeologist sophisticated guesswork. Student7 04:23, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal

Please see the WikiProject New Hampshire talk page for background on the proposed merge of the Littleton CDP article with this article. --Ken Gallager (talk) 16:55, 19 November 2007 (UTC)