Founding year: Wikidata. First post office: 1828.The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Greenville’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Greenville is more historic than 41% of U.S. towns. Its share of homes from before 1940 holds the grade up; its National Register listings pull it down.
C+
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Greenville’s overall grade.
New Hampshire towns list more on the Register than most of the country (a typical New Hampshire town has 9.5 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Greenville’s 0.0 sits below most of its state (8% of New Hampshire towns have fewer) while its 0 listings outnumber those of 23% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from D to B. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±6.7 points). Two sources give 1872.
Founding year: Wikidata (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Greenville’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Once a part of Mason called "Mason Village", Greenville is one of the state's newest and smallest towns, incorporated in 1872. It is located at the High Falls on the Souhegan River, whose plentiful water power provided the mill town with the state's first industries, making cotton and woolen goods. Because of the falls, Greenville was always a manufacturing center. The Columbian Manufacturing Company was established in 1826 to make textiles in both Greenville and neighboring New Ipswich. The Columbian is long gone, but its fine brick buildings still dominate the village, kept company by Queen Anne style houses on side streets. The mills are now used for other businesses and storage, and one has been converted into housing for the elderly.
Passages that mention Greenville, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Hillsborough County, New Hampshire1885 · page 522Read the page →
Read the text
The Peterborough and Shirley Railroad, now the Greenville Branch of the Fitchburg Railroad, was put in operation as far as the Souhegan River, or about a mile from the village, November 11, 1850, and two years after the road was completed to its present terminus. This delay was caused by the labor requisite to build the bridge for the river crossing, which has been called one of the greatest works
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
History of Hillsborough County, New Hampshire1885 · page 518Read the page →
Read the text
The town of Greenville is a rectangle in form, about four miles in length, by one and one-half miles in breadth, cut from the northwest corner of Mason, and otherwise bounded north by Temple and Wilton, and west by New Ipswich.
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Greenville, 1828 to 1979
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
In 1872, according to Wikidata. Greenville’s post office opened in 1828, and the census of 1880 counted 1,072 people here.
How does Greenville rank for history?
Greenville is more historic than 41% of U.S. towns. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
How old are the homes in Greenville?
26% of Greenville’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±6.7 points), against a typical 17% for a New Hampshire town; the median home was built in 1974.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
From Wikimedia Commons (6), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
1886
2008
2008