Farmington, New Hampshire
Strafford county, was formerly a part of Rochester, but was incorporated as a distinct town, Dec. 1, 1798. It lies 36 miles E.N.E. from Concord and 17 N.W. by N. from Dover. The Cocheco meanders through the N.E. part of the town. The Blue hills or Frost mountains extend nearly through the town under different names. From the summit of the ridge in the S.E. part, ships may be seen by the naked eye off Portsmouth harbor; while to the N. and W. the White Hills and the Monadnock, with hundreds of smaller mountains, meet the eye of the beholder. There is, not far from the village in Farmington, a rock supposed to weigh from 60 to 80 tons, so exactly positioned on other rocks, that it may be caused to vibrate several inches by the hand. At the bank of the Cocheco, a little more than a mile S.E. from the principal village, is a place called the Dock, so named from the circumstance that the first settlers usually deposited their lumber here to be floated down the river. This name is some times ignorantly applied to the village.
Hon. Aaron Wingate, for many years a member of the legislature, a counsellor from 1797 to 1803, and for sometime chief-justice of the common pleas in Strafford, died here in 1822, aged 78 years. Population, 1830, 1,465.
