Manchester has played a unique and historically significant role in American history. Called the Queen City because it is the largest city in New Hampshire yet not the state capital, this waterfront city was shaped by the hard work, spiritualism, creativity, and dedication of generations of people of different backgrounds, from Native Americans to European and Canadian settlers, to the wide variety of worldwide ethnicities represented today. Manchester is home to Revolutionary War hero Major General John Stark and many other notable individuals in the arts, politics, philanthropy, and industry.

It was on the banks of the Merrimack River, near the powerful Amoskeag Falls, that America's industrial and technological revolution reached full power through the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, once the world's largest cotton textile mill; changing forever the social fabric of this nation and the world. By the turn of the 19th century, the label Made in Manchester, NH, USA, appeared around the globe on objects ranging from textiles and shoes to cigars, rifles, sewing machines, and railroad locomotives.

The first cotton spinning mill was built on the west bank of the Merrimack River by Benjamin Prichard, circa 1804. In 1831, a group of investors known as the Boston Associates acquired the small, three-mill complex and reorganized it into the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company. The AMC completed its first mill, Stark Mill No. 1, on the east bank of the river in 1839, beginning a century of productivity unmatched in its time.

For more than 100 years, the Manchester Historic Association has collected, preserved, and shared the artifacts that document the area=s history-making accomplishments. Its distinctive museum and library collections feature thousands of objects, photographs, publications, and documents that permit the study of a remarkable history that is unique in America. Through the Amherst Street Research Center and The Millyard Museum, the MHA uses its collections, exhibits, lectures, workshops, symposia, outreach efforts, interdisciplinary school programs, internships, reading programs, and walking and biking tours, to bring Manchester's past to life for a diverse audience of students, families, researchers, journalists, scholars, and tourists.