The Town of Plaistow is situated in the Southeast corner of New Hampshire. It has an area of nine square miles. Town boundaries are: on the north by Hampstead, northeast by Kingston, east by Newton, south by Haverhill, Massachusetts and west by Atkinson.

The limited business affairs of the small, pre-revolutionary community were attended to by a minister and a clerk. Later the town was made an agent of the Crown and a few "selected men" conducted business.

The colony level of government ended about twenty years after Plaistow's corporate birth and a county government probate was instituted. It was now a century and a half since the first plantation had been settled north of the Merrimack, in Hampton.