Just a year after the Declaration of Independence, Grafton produced the earliest surviving record of its disquiet with taxes—a May 1777 petition in which town leaders tried to convince the ruling New Hampshire Council that they should be exempt. Even accounting for a certain looseness in spelling common to the period, the petition was glorious in its semi-literacy. It got off on the wrong foot by mistaking the state in which they lived as “New Hamsheir” and went rapidly downhill from there, referring to state officers as, variously, “your honours,” “your Honners,” and “your Onners.” “Wee take
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