Boston and the Massachusetts Bay Colony

Also known as Shawmut, Trimount, 

Trimount, or Boston As It Was, illustration published in Gleason’s pictorial, circa 1850

Early Boston was a hilly peninsula originally inhabited by the Massachusetts tribe of Native Americans who have lived in the area since 2400 BC. The tribe called the area Shawmut and the nearby river, which is now known as the Charles River, the Quinnebequi.The small peninsula was only 789 acres wide and consisted of three hills that settlers later named Trimount: Mount Vernon, Beacon Hill and Pemberton Hill, as well as two other hills they named Copp’s Hill and Fort Hill.

In 1614, explorer Captain John Smith sailed to the Massachusetts Bay and befriended the tribe living in the area. Two years later he published a map of the area and named it New England to make it more appealing to English colonists.

By 1618, more than two thirds of the Massachusetts Indians living in the area were wiped out by yellow fever and small pox brought by European traders. Only 25,000 Indians survived.

After a settlement known as the Gorges Colony failed in Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1623, almost all of the colonists returned to England except for the Reverend William Blackstone. Blackstone (also spelled Blaxton), an Anglican clergyman, moved from Weymouth to the Shawmut Peninsula, in the area that is now Beacon Hill.

He built a cabin near a fresh water spring at what is now the intersection of Charles Street and Beacon Street and lived “isolated and alone.” This made him the first European settler to live in Boston. He befriended the local Indians and sustained himself by hunting animals and planting the first apple orchard in New England from seeds he had collected. He is often show in pictures riding a bull. He is said to have brought 186 books with him when he came to New England.

Conjectural drawing of William Blaxton’s house in Boston, 1630-1635. (illustration 1889)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Blackstone_house_Boston_byEdwinWhitefield_1889.png

The Puritans who arrived on the Winthrop fleet in 1630 originally stopped in Charlestown, across the river from the Shawmut peninsula, but the colony suffered due to a lack of fresh water. William Blackstone learned about the new settlers’ troubles through his Native American friends in the area. When Winthrop went to visit Blackstone, with whom he had attended Cambridge University in England, Blackstone invited Winthrop and the Massachusetts Bay Colony to live with him on the Shawmut peninsula. Because of continued illness and deaths in Charlestown, the group accepted Blackstone’s offer, moved across the Charles, and started to build houses for their new settlement on what they called Trimountaine. In September of 1630, the colonists officially named their new town Boston, after Boston, Lincolnshire, England.

Gov. John Winthrop, and Deputy Gov. Thomas Dudley decided to divide their company. While the main body stayed in Boston, Sir Richard Saltonstall and the Rev. Mr. Phillips moved up the Charles River to the Watertown Landing, where they settled and established a church. Other groups went to Dorchester, and Weymouth where there had been previous attempts at settlement.

In 1634, Anne Hutchinson followed her mentor, John Cotton, to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and built a house in what is now downtown Boston. In 1636, Hutchinson’s “rebellious ways” helped incite the Antinomian Controversy, a religious and political controversy that resulted in her banishment from the colony.

By the 1635, hundreds of additional Puritans had arrived from England, Blackstone grew tired of the Puritan’s strict ways and the pressure he felt to conform. He decided to sell his remaining land, which became Boston Common, to the Puritans, and moved about 35 miles south to what is now Rhode Island. He is reputed to have told them, “I came from London because I did not like the Lord Bishops, but I cannot join you because I would not be under the Lord-Brethren,”

In 1635, Blaxton became the first European settler in the original bounds of Rehoboth, in the area which would eventually become part of Rhode Island. He built his house in the area of present-day Cumberland on the river that now bears his name (Blackstone River). When Roger Williams established his colony in Rhode Island, he invited Blaxton to preach to his congregation, and they agreed to disagree amicably over their religious differences. Blaxton is credited with being the first clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States.

Schools were soon built, including the first American public school called the Boston Latin School, and laws were passed requiring a school in every town with more than 50 inhabitants.

In 1643, the first slaves imported directly from Africa to Massachusetts arrived in Boston. They probably weren’t the first slaves in the colony, it is believed that an early settler named Samuel Maverick may have brought the first two slaves to the area in 1624, but 1643 marked the beginning of widespread slavery in Massachusetts.

More Puritans continued to immigrate from England and the number of colonies in Massachusetts multiplied to a total of four: Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven. In 1641, the colonies in New Hampshire had come under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1643, the four colonies formed a military alliance, known as the New England Confederation, to help defend themselves from Native American attacks.

About 20,000 people migrated to New England in the 1630s. Although the colonists initially had decent relationships with the local native populations, frictions arose over cultural differences, which were further exacerbated by Dutch colonial expansion. These led first to the Pequot War (1636–1638), and then to King Philip's War (1675–1676), after which most of the natives in southern New England had been pacified, killed, or driven away.

Disease continued to ravage the Native American population. By 1650, about 90 percent of the Native Americans living in New England died due to diseases brought by the European settlers. While the Native American population declined, the number of settlers flourished. By 1676, Boston had 4,000 residents.

The colonists built the city’s first post office in 1639, the first bank in 1674 and published its first American newspaper in 1690, titled “Publick Occurrences: Both Foreign and Domestick.” The colony was economically successful, engaging in trade with England and the West Indies. A shortage of hard currency in the colony prompted it to establish a mint in 1652.

By 1658, Massachusetts had asserted control over the Gorges colonies in Main.

Ongoing political difficulties with England after the English Restoration led to the revocation of the colonial charter in 1684, due to repeated violations of the terms of the charter, including running an illegal mint, establishing religious laws and discriminating against Anglicans.

King James II established the Dominion of New England in 1686 to bring all of the New England colonies under firmer crown control. The dominion collapsed after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 deposed James, and the colony reverted to rule under the revoked charter until 1692, when Sir William Phips arrived bearing the charter of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, which combined the Massachusetts Bay territories and Maine colony with those of the Plymouth Colony and proprietary holdings on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard into a single colony. This charter restricted religiously-based laws, such as the church membership requirement needed to become a voter, and tightened the British government’s control over the colony which caused much anxiety among the colonists.

The colonists worried that their religion, and they themselves, were once again under attack. This anxiety may have been one of the many underlying causes of the hysteria that sparked the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.

In the 19th-century, Boston became the American equivalent of the Netherlands when the decision was made to increase the available land by filling in the Back Bay and other marsh areas. The firm of Goss and Munson built additional railroad trackage extending to quarries in Needham, Massachusetts, 9 miles (14 km) away. twenty-five 35-car trains arrived every 24 hours carrying gravel and other fill, at a rate in the daytime of one every 45 minutes for 50 years. The Back Bay project began in 1814 and was completed by 1886.. The project was the largest of a number of land-reclamation projects which, more than doubled the size of the original Shawmut Peninsula. Boston is no longer Tri-Mount, because Mount Vernon, Copp’s Hill and Beacon Hill were razed to provide fill. Fort Hill and Pemberton Hill were later cut down for other fill projects that continued until 1900.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Boston

(http://www.ask.com/wiki/Massachusetts_Bay_Colony?)

http://historyofmassachusetts.org

Notes Concerning the Early “Freemen” in New England originally published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register III 1849 “List of Freemen”

http://historyofmassachusetts.org/a-brief-history-of-early-boston/

http://historyofmassachusetts.org/how-boston-lost-its-hills/

https://www.historicnewengland.org/explore/collections-access/capobject/?refd=AR001.PLOT.033

https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:9s161947r

Maps of Boston land grants compiled from the Book Of Possessions.

Plan of Boston showing existing ways and owners on December 25, 1635

C:\Users\carol\Pictures\BFJ\BFJ Ancestors\1645 Boston Map 2.PNG

old boston 1

 

Johnson Direct Line Ancestors Who Lived in Boston

Places to visit in Boston

  • The site of the fabric shop of ancestors Nathaniel and Elizabeth Wight Heaton on the east side of Washington Street at Downtown Crossing, between Summer St and Franklin St. -, now occupied by the Millennial Tower.

  • The site of the Inn owned by our ancestors Thomas and Milcha Kelway Snow and daughter Melatiah Snow. The "Genealogical" column of the Boston Evening Transcript, 4 Nov 1907: places Thomas and Milcah (Kelway) Snow's lot "about on the northwest corner of Tremont and Boylston Streets" in Boston. This is now part of the Boston Common, next to the Old Cemetery. The Great Migration says, “This lot was the north east corner of present Boylston and Tremont. That would be the current site of the Grand Lodge of Masons of Massachusetts.

  • New England Historic Genealogical Society - 99 Newbury St. (Members, free; Non-members, $20 day-pass. 888-296-34470.

  • Boston Common

  • Massachusetts State House

  • Park St. Church (1810)

  • Granary Burying Ground

  • King’s Chapel ($2 sugg. don.)

  • King’s Chapel Burying Ground

  • Benjamin Franklin Statue

  • Boston Latin School

  • Old Corner Bookstore

  • *Old South Meeting House

  • *Old State House

  • Site of Boston Massacre

  • Faneuill Hall

  • *Paul Revere House

  • *Old North Church

  • Copp’s Hill Burying Ground

  • USS Constitution Cruise

  • Bunker Hill Monument and exhibit (Free tickets needed to climb the tower. FCFS)

  • USS Constitution (Free)

  • USS Constitution Museum ($3 suggested donation

  • Tour Trinity Church $6 (highly recommended)

  • New England Aquarium

  • Skywalk Observatory

  • Museum of Science

  • Mary Baker Eddy Mappariam

  • Museum of Fine arts

  • Boston Children’s Museum

  • Legoland Discovery Center

  • Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

  • Isabella Gardner Museum

  • Fenway Park Tour

  • Otis House Museum

  • Institute of Cont. Art