Meshech Weare was born in Hampton Falls, N. H. , the son of Nathaniel Weare and his second wife, Mary Waite. He was a descendant of Nathaniel Weare who had settled in Newbury, Massachussets, as early as 1638. His father was a judge of the superior court.
Meshech, the youngest son in a family of fourteen children, received a good education and was graduated at Harvard in 1735.
He had expected to enter the ministry but abandoned his intention not long after graduation. For some years he devoted himself to the development and management of his extensive farm property. He also studied law and after 1745 gave steadily increasing attention to public affairs. From 1745 to 1755 he represented Hampton in the legislature, and with occasional interruptions this service continued until the overturn of royal government in 1775. This legislative experience was reinforced by a wide variety of committee service, by three years as speaker, eight as clerk, and by attendance at the Albany Congress in 1754. He was also a justice in the superior court from 1747 to 1775 and a colonel of militia. He was over sixty years of age when the Revolution began, had many associations with the royalist element and was naturally conservative. His contemporary, Paine Wingate, declares that he viewed the revolutionary movement "with caution, and certainly with no prepossession in favor of measures the country was adopting". His temperate advice at the early provincial congresses aroused some opposition among the more radical leaders, but when the break with the mother country was irreparable his accession to the Revolutionary cause made him the outstanding civilian figure in his state for the ensuing decade. Between 1776 and 1784 he served as president of the Council which was charged with the executive functions of the state, and in addition was chairman of the important committee of safety. He was, as a result, in contact with both continental and other state authorities and much more than a local leader. In addition to his executive duties he was chief justice from 1776 to 1782, participated in many constitutional discussions, and exercised widespread influence as a leader of public opinion. In 1784 he was elected president of the state (the title of governor did not come into use for several years). A year later he resigned all offices because of failing health. His extensive correspondence and other papers after various vicissitudes passed into the custody of the New Hampshire and Massachusetts Historical Societies and the Library of Congress. They constitute a valuable source of Revolutionary history.
He served as the first President of New Hampshire from 1776 to 1785. The New Hampshire town of Weare (formerly Hale's Town or Robie's Town) was renamed in 1764 to honor his service as the town's first clerk. In Hampton Falls, a park, built in the early 2000s directly next to his house, is named for him.
His contemporaries lay great stress on his equable temper, fairness, shrewdness and honesty, qualities of the utmost value in such a formative period.
On July 20, 1738, he was married to Elizabeth Shaw and after her death, to Mehitable Wainwright, on December 11, 1746. He had two children by his first wife, and eight by his second.
