David Thompson (New Hampshire Settler)

David Thompson was the first non-native settler of New Hampshire. He may have been a descendant of Sir Thomas Stewart, Master of Mar.

The colony that became the state of New Hampshire was founded on the division in 1629 of a land grant given in 1622 by the Council for New England to Captain John Mason (former governor of Newfoundland) and Sir Ferdinando Gorges (who founded Maine). The colony was named "New Hampshire" by Mason after the English county of Hampshire, one of the first Saxon shires. John Mason sent David Thompson to set up the first settlement.

David Thompson first settled at Odiorne's Point in Rye (near Portsmouth) with a group of fishermen from England in 1623, just three years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. The settlers built a fort, manor house and other buildings, some for fish processing, on Flake Hill at the mouth of the Piscataqua River, naming the settlement "Pannaway Plantation". In 1623 the English explorer Christopher Levett, an associate of Gorges and a member of the Council for New England, wrote of visiting Thomson at his Pannaway Plantation. Early historians believed the first native-born New Hampshirite, John Thompson, was born there; later he was found to have been baptized at St. Andrew's Parish in Plymouth, England, in 1619.

David Thompson had been sent by Mason, to be followed a few years later by Edward and William Hilton.

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