Carole,
The swapping of names between Belknap and Gunstock Mts did in fact happen - there are old histories of Gilford in the Gilford Library that do attest to the fact that at one time or another each of those mountains was named both Gunstock or Belknap. Before Belknap was officially named to honor Jeremy Belknap, whose 18th century book on the history of NH won him considerable acclaim nationally for writing one of the very first serious histories of a colony, the present Mt Belknap was named Gunstock.When the first white men came to the Gilford area (which was part of Gilmanton at the time) they had a special event happen to them on the large mountain, in which the stock of a musket of one of the men was broken, (there are at least 2 versions of just how it got broken - one involving a poorly felled tree and the other the killing of an attacking mountain lion by hitting it over the head with the gun) and they named the mountain Gunstock because of their felt significance of that event. Names of mountains can be very volatile - the most recent example of changed names of significant features of the Belknap Range has happened within the last few decades, when the scouts renamed several features of their newly acquired property (including Lake Eileen - formerly known as Woodmans Pond, Sanctity Pond, Lower Round Pond, and who knows what else, and Mt Klem, which I've been told was formerly known as Goves Mt.
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