Puritan History in Boston

From the Great Ice Age to the Puritans' Arrival

8000 BC – 1630 AD

8000 BC
Long before the Puritan history of Boston begins, glaciers and ice sheets covering North America retreat as the Great Ice Age, or the Pleistocene Epoch, which started some 1.8 million years earlier, draws to an end.  As the glaciers melt, they deposit debris caught in their ice—called moraine—across the northeastern part of the continent, including the Boston area. 

You can still see the glaciers’ deposits - drumlins (whale-shaped hills, such as Beacon Hill), sand and gravel ridges, round indentations (kettle ponds), rocks, and boulders that shape the landscape of Boston and surrounding areas.  Almost 10,000 years later, this same strange landscape will greet the first Puritans.

2400 BC
Also well before Puritan history in Boston begins, Native Americans start to occupy eastern Massachusetts.  They establish themselves on a peninsula that they call Shawmut, which roughly means "land of many waters," next to a river that they call Quinnebequi.  

1600 AD
By now as many as 100,000 native inhabitants belonging to the Algonquin Nation live across New England.  They belong to smaller regional groups including the Massachusett, Wampanoag, and Nipmuck. If they could see 30 years into the future, they would spot the sails of Puritan ships looming large on the horizon.

Preamble to Puritan History in Boston –
Captain John Smith Arrives

1614
Courageous explorer Captain John Smith sails down the Maine coast to Massachusetts Bay.  He makes contact with the native inhabitants. 

Rounding the Shawmut Peninsula, Captain Smith spots nearby islands lush with Native American corn, calling them “the Paradise of all these parts."  He notes a hilly smaller peninsula with three peaks – an important site in Puritan history – surrounded by a harbor fed by three rivers.

Two years later, Smith draws a map of the coast, labeling it "New England" to make it seem more attractive to potential colonists. For land claim purposes, he backdates his map to 1614. 

Initially labeling least two different rivers Quinnebequi, which means long still water, he decides to rename them to honor Prince Charles of England.  He calls the southern one River Charles, and the northern one Kennebec River. 

1617-18
An epidemic speculated to be smallpox brought accidentally by European exploreres kills about 75% of the Native Americans who have occupied eastern Massachusetts for the past 4,000 years, leaving only about 25,000 across the region. The closest settlement to the Shawmut Peninsula is in present-day Jamaica Plain, and it is decimated. 

Puritan History Begins –
Reverend William Blaxton Arrives

1623
Reverend William Blaxton, an Anglican clergyman born in Lincolnshire, England in 1595, lands near Weymouth with his collection of 186 books written in various languages. 

Blaxton is part of a group brought by Captain Robert Gorges to establish a religious settlement – but in a rough moment for Puritan history, they discover that another group of English settlers already occupies the land they’d hoped to claim.

1625
After failing to establish themselves in the New World, most of Blaxton’s original group returns to England – but Blaxton and several others strike out to find land for themselves. 

Blaxton moves north to the western slope of what is now Beacon Hill and lays claim to about 800 acres. He builds himself a snug cabin from logs near a fresh water spring (near the Charles Street and Beacon Street intersection, on what is now Boston Common, a site on Boston's Freedom Trail), settles in with his book collection, plants an orchard – the first in the United States - with apple seeds that he’s collected, and becomes Boston’s first known permanent European resident.

Like the Native Americans who occasionally pass through the area while hunting partridge, he calls the area Shawmut.  

The remaining Puritans settle nearby in Charlestown, Chelsea, and on Thompson’s Island.

Puritan History in the Making –
Flight from England

1629
In England, years of religious strife between the official Anglican Church and the nonconformist Calvinists who want to “purify” it from within—and therefore are called Puritans—cause John Winthrop and a like-minded group of wealthy Puritans to pool their resources and become shareholders in a royal charter to establish a commercial venture in New England.  Many of them are from the town of Boston in Lincolnshire. 

Winthrop and the others pool their money and buy the existing but bankrupt Massachusetts Bay Company, formerly named the New England Company, set up earlier for the purpose of colonizing and reaping benefits from the New World, and approved earlier that year by the King. They purchase it as a joint stock venture, specify that only those who emigrate can own stock in it (thus protecting themselves from meddling outsiders), and sign a compact and charter that become the framework for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Charters of other similar companies of that time specify that annual Board of Directors meetings must be held in London, subject to scrutiny by the King and Parliament. The Massachusetts Bay Company's charter fails to mention a meeting place - an oversight that Winthrop and the other investors realize can be used to their advantage.

They decide that their colony will be self-governing, although they will still be English citizens and subjects of the king. They see this as a way to escape persecution in England, to exercise a degree of self-rule, and to create a new community based on their beliefs in predestination, austerity, and eventual rewards by the Almighty.

Another Key Moment in Puritan History

1630
Led by the flagship Arbella, the first four ships in the Puritans' fleet of 12 leave England on April 7, 1630 and land in Salem after a 3-month journey across the Atlantic. Eventually almost 1,000 English immigrants led by John Winthrop and sponsored by the Massachusetts Bay Company arrive.

At the time of the Puritans' arrival, about 500 other English settlers, mostly Pilgrims in the Plymouth area, already inhabit Massachusetts.  In case you’re wondering what is the difference between Pilgrims and Puritans, Pilgrims want to separate from the Church of England, while the Puritans want to “purify” and reform it.

In July, most of the Massachusetts Bay Colony move to Charlestown, where the lack of fresh water causes much sickness and some deaths. 

Reverend Blaxton, a former college classmate of several of the group’s members back in England, hears about their problems and invites them to move to Shawmut where springs provide plenty of fresh water.  Of course, the Puritans don’t actually drink the water – following current English custom, they use it to make beer.

Upon hearing Blaxton’s offer, John Winthrop declares, “We shall build a city upon a hill; the eyes of all people are upon us.” Most of the colonists move with him to the Shawmut Peninsula, while a few migrate inland to Cambridge and several others establish a plantation that they call Watertown. 

At first the Puritans call their new settlement Tremontaine (Trimountain) because of the three tall peaks noted by John Smith.  Within a few weeks—perhaps inspired by homesickness—they change it to Boston, the town in Lincolnshire, England from which many of them came.

Sadly, before the end of 1630, they also establish the Colony's first graveyard, now called the King's Chapel Burying Ground. 

Within the first year of their arrival, 200 of them find their final resting place in this historic cemetery.  Eventually, King's Chapel Burying Ground will contain most of the first generation of Boston's Puritan founders. 

Insider tip related to Puritan History

Are you fascinated by old maps such as the one shown above? If so, check out The Cartographic Creation of New England, an exhibition of early maps that includes the John Smith map shown above as well as others depicting European exploration and settlements in Northeast America.

The exhibition was put together by the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine, Portland back in 1996-97.

Happily, you can still see it on-line as part of an even larger map collection housed at the University of Kansas. Here is the url for the location on the University of Kansas website (which will open in a separate window): http://www.lib.ku.edu/mapscoll/wworld.shtml

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