Colonel Joseph Whipple (1738 – 1816), the father of Jefferson, arrived in this area in 1772. He wanted to develop a township and started purchasing rights to the lapsed land grants that originally had been bestowed to John Goffe and others by royal Governor Benning Wentworth. The grant area was known as Dartmouth. By 1796, Whipple had secured all the original rights to the township for $4,200 (approximately $80,000 in 2016 dollars). The town was divided into 11 ranges with 24 lots in each range, each lot containing 100 acres. To encourage settlement in his town, Whipple would give settlers 50 acres and they would pay $50 for the remaining acres in the lot. At his death he owned over 25,000 acres.
In 1796, Whipple petitioned the New Hampshire legislature to grant him a charter for the Town of Jefferson (the Dartmouth grant area), naming it for Secretary of State and future President Thomas Jefferson. There were about 20 voters and taxpayers at the first town meeting in March 1798. Jefferson’s current population is around 1,000.
Learn more about Colonel Whipple at nearby cache sites: Whipple #1, #2, #4, #5, #6, #7 and #8.