Letters from New England: The Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1629-1638

1977 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 556
Author(s):  
Darrett B. Rutman ◽  
Everett Emerson
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Massachusetts Bay Colony

Native Americans, Conversion, and Christian Practice in Colonial New England, 1640—1730

2009 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linford D. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
New England ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Native Culture ◽  
Massachusetts Bay Colony ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
The One ◽  
Christian Practices ◽  
Gospel Message ◽  
Over Time

Fortunately, the two travelers arrived before sunset. Earlier in the day, on 5 May 1674, John Eliot and Daniel Gookin had set out from Boston for Wamesit, the northernmost of the fourteen Indian “praying towns” within the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the one most subjected to retaliatory attacks from raiding bands of Mohawks in the previous few years. Upon safe arrival, the Englishmen greeted their Pennacook friends and gathered as many as they could at the wigwam of Wannalancet, the head sachem of Wamesit, where Eliot, the aging missionary to the Indians, proceeded to talk about the meaning of the parable of the marriage of the king's son in Matthew 22:1—4. Wannalancet, according to Gookin, was a “sober and grave person, and of years, between fifty and sixty”; he had from the beginning been “loving and friendly to the English,” and in return they had tried to encourage him to embrace Christianity. Although the English missionaries would have desired him to readily accept the gospel message they preached, Wannalancet voluntarily incorporated Christian practices slowly, over time, without necessarily repudiating his native culture and traditional religious practices.1 For four years Wannalancet “had been willing to hear the word of God preached”; when Eliot or other missionaries made their periodic visits to Wamesit, Wannalancet made sure he was there. Over time, Wannalancet adopted the English practices of keeping the Sabbath, learning to go to any available meeting or instruction, fellowshipping, and refraining from various activities proscribed by the town's praying leaders. Despite all that, however, the English missionaries still complained that he “hath stood off” since he had “not yielded up himself personally.”2

New England

2019 ◽  
pp. 24-42
Author(s):  
William E. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
New Haven ◽  
The World ◽  
Massachusetts Bay Colony ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

This chapter focuses mainly on developments in the law of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was founded as a Puritan utopia to display to rest of the world how a society should be governed. Although Massachusetts incorporated elements of the common law into its legal system, the dominant source of law was the word of God. But the divine word, which was enforced by the magistrates of the Court of Assistants, sometimes met resistance from local juries. A major issue throughout the 1630s and 1640s was whether the magistrates or local people would have final authority to determine the substance of the law; the issue was resolved in 1649 by providing for appeals in all cases of judge-jury disagreement to the General Court sitting as a unicameral body in which representatives of localities outnumbered the magistrates and thus had final authority. The chapter ends with a brief look at legal developments in Connecticut, New Haven, Plymouth, and Rhode Island.

Manufacturing in Puritan rural towns in New England 1630–60: ‘A Miller Never Goes to Heaven’

Rural History ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
John R. Mullin ◽  
Zenia Kotval
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
New England ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Physical Character ◽  
Physical Form ◽  
Cultural Climate ◽  
Massachusetts Bay Colony

Abstract This article is an analysis of the influence of blacksmiths, and saw and grain millers on the development of Puritan communities in the Massachusetts Bay Colony between 1630 and 1660. During this period these artisans played a significant role in defining the physical form of the rural Puritan town and its economic development, without intent and in a social and cultural climate where they were often disliked and distrusted. This article focuses on the impacts of these manufacturers on the formation and physical character of Puritan communities in New England.

“Hee Had Lost a Great Many Men in the Warr”

2018 ◽  
pp. 157-175
Author(s):  
Jenny Hale Pulsipher
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
King Philip's War ◽  
Plymouth Colony ◽  
Massachusetts Bay Colony ◽  
Northern New England

This chapter looks at the war between the colonists and many of the surrounding Native peoples in New England, which began in late June 1675. Initially, it involved only the English of Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoags under their sachem Philip Metacom—also known as King Philip—but the conflict quickly spread to Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and northern New England, drawing in English and Indian combatants from all of those locales, including the Nipmucs of the central Massachusetts highlands. Few groups suffered more during King Philip's War than the Christian Indians, caught as they were between the distrust of their Indian kin and the English to whom they had pledged their loyalty. Their treatment by the English during and after King Philip's War fueled John Wompas's growing anger against the Massachusetts government, which would explode on his return to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1677.

Contested Passages

Memory Lands ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. DeLucia
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Native People ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Boston Harbor ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
King Philip's War ◽  
Massachusetts Bay Colony

This chapter examines the area around Boston Harbor and how Algonquians as well as Massachusetts Bay colonists engaged in contestations beginning in the seventeenth century. It begins by unpacking how Wampanoag and Massachusett peoples understood such geographies, including the meanings of rivers, maritime spaces, and islands, drawing upon deep-time oral traditions and archaeology. It then follows the arrival of John Winthrop and Puritans into Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, and how that colonial enterprise began to exert pressures on Native people through epidemic disease, land loss, and imbalanced diplomatic relationships. The arrival of Protestant missionaries such as John Eliot also transformed certain Natives’ relationships to kin networks, homelands, and spiritual affiliations. When King Philip’s War broke out in 1675, Christian-affiliated Natives around the “Praying Town” of Natick, situated on the Charles River, were forcibly rounded up and removed from Natick to an incarceration site on Deer Island in Boston Harbor, where they suffered large casualties. The chapter tracks how survivors of Deer Island navigated a challenging postwar landscape and rebuilt their lives and communities. It also examines New England forms of commemoration in the seventeenth century onward, including literary as well as physical types of memorialization.

The Rise and Fall of the Province of Lygonia, 1643–1658

2009 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 490-513
Author(s):  
Hannah Farber
Keyword(s):  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Legal Standing ◽  
Massachusetts Bay Colony

During the 1640s, George Cleeve and Thomas Morton carved the province of Lygonia out of Ferdinando Gorges' Maine. Cleeve believed Lygonia's legitimacy was guaranteed by its legal standing and by the authority of its Parliamentarian proprietor, but he could not stop Lygonian towns from opting to join the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1658.

Breathing the “Free Aire of the New World”: The Influence of the New England Way on the Gathering of Congregational Churches in Old England, 1640–1660

2010 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-46
Author(s):  
Ralph F. Young
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
New World ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Church Polity

Puritans in England, although engaged in the struggle against Charles I and setting up the Commonwealth under Cromwell closely watched the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. In demonstrating how the New England Way of church polity influenced the rise of Congregationalism in England, Young details the transatlantic flow of ideas from colony to motherland.

Conflicts of Law: Reconsidering the Influence of Religion on Law in Massachusetts Bay

Numen ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Dale
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Legal System ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Single Point ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Governing System ◽  
Practical Effect ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Practical Impact

AbstractThe idea that there were different points of view in seventeenth century Massachusetts Bay is not a new one. Several recent studies have undermined Perry Miller's monolithic “Puritan Mind”—demonstrating there were many strands of thought even among the nominally orthodox, and suggesting that we think of the settlers in New England as members of a movement with many ideas, rather than holders of a single point of view.While the idea that there were divisions within the category of Puritan is not a new one, the extent to which that ideological pluralism had a practical impact on the Bay colony's institutions, from its families to its governing system, has not yet been explored. This paper is a preliminary effort to demonstrate how ideological pluralism led to different conceptions of law, and had a practical effect on the legal system developed in the first generation of settlement in Massachusetts Bay.

Childhood in the Early Colonial Period

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-73
Author(s):  
Harry Bloch
Keyword(s):  
Child Labor ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Child Life ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
African Slave ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Plymouth Colony ◽  
Massachusetts Bay Colony ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
Poor Children

A great deal has been written about the life, struggles, and accomplishments of pioneer men and women who crossed the ocean to build a new world in the wilderness; but infant and child life during early colonial days is largely hidden in obscurity. Little has been recorded.1 It is known that few children under the age of 7 survived in the crowded immigrant ships: falling into the sea, accidents, hunger, thirst, and sickness took its sad toll. Nevertheless, there were many young2-5: a third of the founders of Plymouth were children; Puritan youth were evident in the great migration to the Massachusetts Bay Colony; several cargoes of poor children and orphans from Dutch almshouses were "bound out" to the burghers of New Netherlands; children were frequently dispatched from England as indentured servants and apprentices; the London Company sent 100 children to Virginia in 1619, and 1,500, kidnapped from Ireland and England, in 1627; African slave children were shipped to the colonies after 1620; and the colonial mother6 bore many children, buried many, and often followed them to the grave at an early age. Fecundity,5 characteristic of early colonists, served to people a continent (the population was 2.5 million in 1776), and provided needed child labor. Over 50% of Plymouth colony consisted of children.7 Colonial children were viewed as miniature adults; and boys and girls were dressed alike until the age of 7.1,7,8 The infant1,7 wore a long linen smock; was covered with a woolen blanket; and a wooden or wicker cradle, hooded to protect from cold draughts, much like those in which Indian babies slept, was its bed.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document