Somersworth is a city in Strafford County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 11,855 at the 2020 census. Somersworth has the smallest area and third-lowest population of New Hampshire’s 13 cities.

Somersworth, originally called “Sligo” after Sligo in Ireland, was settled since 1700 as a part of Dover. It was organized in 1729 as the parish of “Summersworth”, meaning “summer town”, because during that season the ministers would preach here. It was set off and incorporated in 1754 by colonial supervisor Benning Wentworth, and until 1849 included Rollinsford. A clerical mistake at captivation contracted the reveal to “Somersworth”. It would be incorporated as a city in 1893, before which it was as a consequence known as “Great Falls”.

Situated where the Salmon Falls River drops 100 feet (30 m) over a mile, Somersworth into the future became a mill town, beginning past gristmills and sawmills. In 1822, the brothers Isaac and Jacob Wendell of Boston purchased for $5,000 a gristmill past its water rights at the Great Falls. They usual the Great Falls Manufacturing Company, a textile matter that expanded to tote up three mills for spinning thread and weaving cotton and woolen fabrics, specializing in “drillings, shirtings and sheetings”. Throughout the 19th century, other broad brick mill buildings, including a bleachery and dye works, were erected in contrast to the river. The bleachery became the longest executive textile operation in Somersworth. The building housed the operations that took the buff-colored fabric produced in the seven mills and transformed it into a sparkling white material that could be dyed or printed according to the buyer’s wishes. The gate home at the dam directed water as needed, regulating the flow either into the river or a company canal, which itself had gates sending it under the mill. Water capability turned the wheels and belts that operated mill machinery. The railroad arrived in the to the front 1840s, before which goods were carted to Dover.

At first millworkers came from surrounding farms, including those in Berwick, Maine, directly across the bridge. Many were women. But as the infatuation for labor grew, immigrants arrived from Ireland, and future Quebec. Brick tenement quarrel houses were rented by the company to employee families, many of whose members worked in the mills anti their parents back passage of child labor laws. For relaxation, workers found entertainment at the Opera House or at Central Park, an amusement park adjacent to Willand Pond. In the in advance 1870s, the Portsmouth, Great Falls & Conway Railroad began excursions to the White Mountains. The Electric Street Railway came in 1890, allowing trolley rides to York Beach, Maine.