New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. New Hampshire is the 5th least extensive and the 9th least populous of the 50 U.S. states.
It became the first post-colonial sovereign nation in the Americas when it broke off from Great Britain in January 1776, and six months later was one of the original thirteen states that founded the United States of America. In June 1788, it became the ninth state to ratify the United States Constitution, bringing that document into effect. New Hampshire was the first U.S. state to have its own state constitution.
