Massachusetts History

The Earliest Colonies

The coast of what is now Massachusetts was probably skirted by Norsemen in the 11th century, and Europeans of various nationalities (but mostly English) sailed offshore in the late 16th and early 17th centuries Settlement began when the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower and landed, in 1620, at a point they named Plymouth (for their port of embarkation in England). Their first governor, John Carver, died the next year, but under his successor, William Bradford, the Plymouth Colony took firm hold. Weathering early difficulties, the colony eventually prospered.

The agreement that the Pilgrims had with their financial backers required them to live together in a tight community for seven years. But the Pilgrims of Plymouth were not the only early settlers. Other Englishmen also established fishing and trading posts nearby as early as 1622.

Andrew Weston (1622) settled at Wessagusset (now Weymouth) and Thomas Wollaston (1625) settled at Mt. Wollaston, which was renamed Merry Mount (and is now Quincy) when Thomas Morton took charge. The fishing post established (1623) on Cape Ann by Roger Conant failed, but in 1626 he founded Naumkeag (Salem), which in 1628 became the nucleus of a Puritan colony led by John Endecott of the New England Company and chartered by the private Council for New England.

In 1630, new settlers began arriving in droves, and the towns of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and others, began to grow rapidly.

The stories of the Pilgrims and many of these other settlements, will be told in separate articles. This map of the current counties of Massachusetts will help you to visualize where your ancestors may have lived, but bear in mind there were no counties or state divisions in the earliest years of settlement.

Related Articles: