Massachusetts Bay Colony

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement in the 17th century on the east coast of North America. The colony was later called New England and what is now the cities of Salem and Boston. The Bay Colony also included what is now known as the States of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Massachusetts Bay Colony

John Winthrop, the founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, continued to work on the colony, and improve it any possible way. He knew that the Church of England was bad, so he decided to improve it at the New World; either colonizing the natives or getting rid of them.

There were two companies who brought settlers in the New World. The first company was the Dorchester Company but was a failure. The second company was in 1628 and called the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This was successful and brought approximately 20,000 people to the Colony.

At first the colonists had a good friendship with the Native Americans but as more Europeans moved to these areas there were problems over land borders. The Native Americans also had many different customs. These differences led first to the Pequot War (1636–1638), and then to King Philip's War (1675–1676). After these wars, the Native Americans became peaceful and others moved to different places.

The colony was doing well and made money trading with England. They also traded with the West Indies. In 1686 there was a civil war in England. King James II wanted to have total control over the colonies. After the war, the colonies remained the same until 1692. Then Sir William Phips arrived and Massachusetts Bay and the Plymouth Colony were combined. The colonists helped in the running of the government and how it would spend its money.

Earlier times

Map showing Native American tribal areas in southern New England, circa 1600;

From the earliest times many Native American lived in this area. They farmed and hunted within their own land borders and did not cross each other's land. Early in the 1600s, explorers, Samuel de Champlain and John Smith made a map of the area.

Living in the New World was very hard work for the first settlers. Many became ill and died though the cold winter. There was not enough food, and the rest of the people decided to return to England after one year. For awhile there was no more talk of settling people in those parts. English ships did still come to the New England area for fishing and trading with the Indians.

Plymouth Colony

See the main article: Plymouth Colony

In November 1620, a group of Europeans arrived and started Plymouth Colony. Other settlements were tried near there but they failed and the people either joined the Plymouth Colony, returned to England, or lived nearby the Colony.

The people of Plymouth faced many problems during the first years and could not pay back their investors. In 1627 the companies left the colonists to take care of themselves. Edward Winslow and William Bradford, two of its leaders, wrote about the Mayflower and the colony they created, called Plymouth Colony. It was published in England in 1622 called Mourt's Relation. The two men have different opinions but it was written to encourage people to come to the New World to live.

References and further reading

• Adams, Charles Francis; Nash, Gilbert (1905). Wessagusset and Weymouth. Weymouth, MA: Weymouth Historical Society. OCLC 1066255.
• Adams, Brooks (1899). The Emancipation of Massachusetts.
• Adams, Charles; Nash, Gilbert (1905). Wessagusset and Weymouth. Weymouth, MA: Weymouth Historical Society. OCLC 1066255.
• Addison, Albert Christopher (1912). The Romantic Story of the Puritan Fathers: And Their Founding of New Boston. L.C. Page & Co.
• Anderson, Robert Charles (1995). The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633. Boston, MA: New England Historic Genealogical Society. ISBN 978-0-88082-120-9. OCLC 42469253.
• Bowen, Clarence Winthrop (1882). The Boundary Disputes of Connecticut. Boston: James R. Osgood. OCLC 1994357.
• Bremer, Francis (2003). John Winthrop: America's Forgotten Founder. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-514913-5. OCLC 237802295.
• Bremer, Francis; Webster, Tom (2006). Puritans and Puritanism in Europe and America: a Comprehensive Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-57607-678-1.
• Dow, George Francis (1967) [1935]. Everyday Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. New York: Benjamin Blom.
• Field, Edward, ed. (1902). State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the End of the Century: a History. Boston, MA: Mason Publishing. OCLC 14245880.
• Fry, William Henry (1908). New Hampshire as a Royal Province. New York: Columbia University. OCLC 1981065.
• Guiley, Rosemary (2008) [1999]. The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft, and Wicca. New York: Facts on File. ISBN 9781438126845. OCLC 435912011.
• Hart, Albert Bushnell, ed. (1927). Commonwealth History of Massachusetts. New York: The States History Company. OCLC 1543273. (five volume history of Massachusetts until the early 20th century)
• Hayes, Kevin (2008). The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195187274. OCLC 132584511.
• Heath, Dwight, ed. (1986) [1963]. Mourt's Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Cambridge, MA: Applewood Books. ISBN 9780918222848. OCLC 20838253.
• Hubbard, Bill (2009). American Boundaries: the Nation, the States, the Rectangular Survey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-35591-7. OCLC 163625212.
• Hubbard, William (1848). A General History of New England. Boston: C.C. Little and J. Brown.
• Labaree, Benjamin (1979). Colonial Massachusetts: a History. Millwood, NY: KTO Press. ISBN 978-0-527-18714-9. OCLC 248194957.
• MacDonald, William (1908). Documentary Source Book of American History: 1606–1898. New York: The Macmillan Company.
• Main, Gloria (2001). Peoples of a Spacious Land. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674006283.
• Mayo, Lawrence Shaw (1936). John Endecott. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. OCLC 1601746.
• Moore, Jacob Bailey (1851). Lives of the Governors of New Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. Boston: C. D. Strong. OCLC 11362972.
• Morison, Samuel Eliot (1956). The story of the "Old Colony" of New Plymouth, 1620–1692. New York: Knopf. OCLC 174859473.
• Morison, Samuel Eliot (1981) [1930]. Builders of the Bay Colony. Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 0-930350-22-7.
• Rogers, Horatio (2009). Mary Dyer of Rhode Island: The Quaker Martyr That Was Hanged on Boston. BiblioBazaar. ISBN 978-1-103-80124-4.
• Starkey, Marion L. (1961) [1949]. The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Inquiry into the Salem Witch Trials. Garden City, NY: Dolphin.
• Stratton, Eugene (1986). Plymouth Colony: Its History & People, 1620–1691. Salt Lake City, UT: Ancestry Publications. ISBN 9780916489137. OCLC 15349442.
• Thayer, Henry Otis (1892). The Sagadahoc Colony. Portland: Printed for the Gorges Society. Retrieved 2008-12-23.
• Thomas, Hugh (1997). The Slave Trade: the Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-81063-8. OCLC 36884041.
• Vaughan, Alden T (1995). New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620–1675. Norman, OK: Oklahoma University Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-2718-7. OCLC 299797876.
• West, Willis (1922). The Story of American Democracy, Political and Industrial. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. OCLC 2564556.
• Wheeler, Richard (2009) [1900]. History of the Town of Stonington, Connecticut. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company. OCLC 30055748.
• Winthrop, John (1996). The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649. Dunn, Richard; Savage, James; Yeandle, Laetitia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-48425-2. OCLC 185405449.

• The Charters and General Laws of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay. Boston: Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 1814. OCLC 19448862.