Massachusetts Bay Colony

Life

Architecture

Life could be quite difficult in the early years of the colony. Many colonists lived in fairly crude structures, including dugouts, wigwams, and dirt-floor huts made using wattle and daub construction. Construction improved in later years, and houses began to be sheathed in clapboard, with thatch or plank roofs and wooden chimneys following English styles. Wealthier individuals would extend their house by adding a lean-to on the back, which allowed a larger kitchen (possibly with a brick or stone chimney including an oven), additional rooms, and a sleeping loft. These houses were the precursors to what is now called the saltbox style of architecture. Interiors became more elaborate in later years, with plaster walls, wainscoting, and potentially expensive turned woodwork in the most expensive homes. On the frontier of the colony, the garrison style house developed to provide protection to the inhabitants.

Town Life

Colonists arriving after the first wave found that the early towns did not have room for them. Seeking land of their own, groups of families would petition the government for land on which to establish a new town; the government would typically allow the group's leaders to select the land. These grants were typically about 40 square miles (10,000 ha), and were located sufficiently near other towns to facilitate defense and social support. The group leaders would also be responsible for acquiring native title to the lands that they selected. By this means, the colony expanded into the interior, spawning settlements in adjacent territories as well.

The land within a town would be divided by communal agreement, usually allocating by methods that originated in England. Outside a town center, land would be allocated for farming, some of which might be held communally. Farmers with large plots of land might build a house near their properties on the outskirts of the town. A town center that was well laid out would be fairly compact, with a tavern, school, possibly some small shops, and a meeting house that was used for civic and religious functions. The meeting house would be the center of the town's political and religious life. Church services might be held for several hours on Wednesday and all day Sunday. Puritans did not observe annual holidays, especially Christmas, which they said had pagan roots. Annual town meetings would be held at the meeting house, generally in May, to elect the town's representatives to the general court and to transact other community business. Towns often had a village green, used for outdoor celebrations and activities such as military exercises of the town's trainband or militia.

Marriage and family life

Many of the early colonists who migrated from England came with some or all of their family. It was expected that individuals would marry fairly young and begin producing offspring. Infant mortality rates were comparatively low, as were instances of childhood death. Men who lost their wives often remarried fairly quickly, especially if they had children needing care. Older widows would also sometimes marry for financial security. It was also normal for older widowed parents to live with one of their children. Due to the Puritan perception of marriage as a civil union, divorce did sometimes occur and could be pursued by both genders.

Sexual activity was expected to be confined to marriage. Sex outside of marriage was considered fornication if neither partner was married, and adultery if one or both were married to someone else. Fornication was generally punished by fines and pressure to marry; a woman who gave birth to an illegitimate child could also be fined. Adultery and rape were more serious crimes, and both were punishable by death. Rape, however, required more than one witness, and was therefore rarely prosecuted. Sexual activity between men was called sodomy, and was also punishable by death.

Within the marriage, the husband was typically responsible for supplying the family's financial needs, although it was not uncommon for women to work in the fields and to perform some home labor (for example, spinning thread or weaving cloth) to supplement the family income. Women were almost exclusively responsible for seeing to the welfare of the children.

Children were baptized at the local meeting house within a week of being born. The mother was usually not present because she was still recovering from the birth, and the child's name was usually chosen by the father. Names were propagated within the family, and names would be reused when infants died. If an adult died without issue, his (or her) name could be carried on when the siblings of the deceased named children in his or her memory.

Education

Most children received some form of schooling, something which the colony's founders believed to be important for forming a proper relationship with God. Towns were obligated to provide education for their children, under the Massachusetts School Laws which was usually satisfied by hiring a teacher of some sort. The quality of these instructors varied, from minimally educated local people to Harvard-educated ministers.

One of the first books published in the United States was The New England Primer. It was intended to promote children's literacy.

Some of the oldest schools in Massachusetts trace back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Boston Latin School was founded in 1635. Other schools include the Roxbury Latin School and the Hopkins Academy.

Government

The structure of the colonial government changed over the lifetime of the charter. The Puritans established a theocratic government limited to church members, although ministers were barred from holding governmental positions. Winthrop, Dudley, the Rev. John Cotton, and other leaders sought to prevent dissenting religious views, and many were banished because of differing religious beliefs, including Roger Williams of Salem and Anne Hutchinson of Boston, and unrepentant Quakers and Anabaptists. By the mid-1640s, Massachusetts Bay Colony had grown to more than 20,000 inhabitants.

The charter granted the general court the authority to elect officers and to make laws for the colony. Its first meeting in North America was held in October 1630, but it was attended by only eight freemen. They formed the first council of assistants and voted (contrary to the terms of the charter) that they should elect the governor and deputy from among themselves. The general court determined at the next session that it would elect the governor and deputy.

An additional 116 settlers were admitted to the general court as freemen in 1631, but most of the governing and judicial power remained with the council of assistants. They also enacted a law specifying that only those men who "are members of some of the churches" in the colony were eligible to become freemen and gain the vote. This restriction was not changed until after the English Restoration. The process by which individuals became members of one of the colony's churches involved a detailed questioning by the church elders of their beliefs and religious experiences; as a result, only individuals whose religious views accorded with those of the church leadership were likely to become members and gain the ability to vote in the colony. After a protest over the imposition of taxes by a meeting of the council of assistants, the general court ordered each town to send two representatives known as deputies to meet with the court to discuss matters of taxation.

Questions of governance and representation arose again in 1634 when several deputies demanded to see the charter, which the assistants had kept hidden from public view. The deputies learned of the provisions that the general court should make all laws, and that all freemen should be members of the general court. They then demanded that the charter be enforced to the letter, which Governor Winthrop pointed out was impractical given the growing number of freemen. The parties reached a compromise and agreed that the general court would be made up of two deputies representing each town. Dudley was elected governor in 1634, and the general court reserved a large number of powers for itself, including those of taxation, distribution of land, and the admission of freemen.

A legal case in 1642 brought about the separation of the council of assistants into an upper house of the general court. The case involved a widow's lost pig and had been overturned by the general court, but the assistants voted as a body to veto the general court's act. The consequence of the ensuing debate was that the general court voted in 1644 that the council of assistants would sit and deliberate separately from the general court (they had sat together until then), and both bodies must concur for any legislation to be passed. Judicial appeals were to be decided by a joint session, since otherwise the assistants would be in the position to veto attempts to overturn their own decisions.

The King and the British government held enough power in Massachusetts Bay in the 1630s that Puritans and others were afraid of being sent home if they got word of unorthodox beliefs such as what Roger Williams expounded.

Laws and judiciary

During 1641, the colony formally adopted the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, which Nathaniel Ward compiled. This document consisted of 100 civil and criminal laws based upon the social sanctions recorded in the Bible. These laws formed the nucleus of colonial legislation until independence and contained some provisions later incorporated into the United States Constitution, such as the ideas of equal protection and double jeopardy.

Massachusetts Bay was the first colony to formalize laws concerning slavery with provision 91 of the Massachusetts Body of Liberties which developed protections for people unable to perform public service. Another law was developed to protect married women, children, and people with mental disabilities from making financial decisions. Colonial law differentiated among types of mental disabilities, classifying them as "distracted persons", "idiots", and "lunaticks". In 1693, "poor laws" enabled communities to use the estates of people with disabilities to defer the cost of community support of those individuals. Many of these laws remained until the American Revolution.

Many behaviors were frowned upon culturally which modern sensibilities might consider relatively trivial actions, and some led to criminal prosecution. These included sleeping during church services, playing cards, and engaging in any number of activities on the Sabbath. Conversely, there were laws which reflected attitudes that are still endorsed by popular sensibilities in the 21st century US, against things such as smoking tobacco, abusing one's mother-in-law, profane dancing, and pulling hair. Children, newcomers, and people with disabilities were exempt from punishment for such infractions.

The colony's council of assistants sat as the final court of appeal and as the principal court for criminal issues of "life, limb, or banishment" and civil issues where the damages exceeded £100. Lesser offenses were heard in county courts or by commissioners appointed for hearing minor disputes. The lower courts were also responsible for issuing licenses and for matters such as probate. Juries were authorized to decide questions of both fact and law, although the court could decide if a jury failed to reach a decision. Sentences for offenses included fines and corporal punishments such as whipping and sitting in the stocks, with the punishments of banishment from the colony and death by hanging reserved for the most serious offenses. Evidence was sometimes based on hearsay and superstition. For example, the "ordeal of touch" was used in 1646 in which someone accused of murder is forced to touch the dead body; if blood appears, the accused is deemed guilty. This was used to convict and execute a woman accused of murdering her newborn child. Bodies of individuals hanged for piracy were sometimes gibbeted (publicly displayed) on harbor islands visible to seagoing vessels.

Notable criminal prosecutions

One of the first to be executed in the colony was Dorothy Talbye, who was apparently delusional. She was hanged in 1638 for murdering her daughter, as the common law of Massachusetts made no distinction at the time between insanity or mental illness and criminal behavior. Midwife Margaret Jones was convicted of being a witch and hanged in 1648 after the condition of patients allegedly worsened in her care.

The colonial leadership was the most active in New England in the persecution of Quakers. In 1660, English Quaker Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston for repeatedly defying a law banning Quakers from the colony. Dyer was one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs. Executions ceased in 1661 when King Charles II explicitly forbade Massachusetts from executing anyone for professing Quakerism.

New England Confederation

In 1643, Massachusetts Bay joined Plymouth Colony, Connecticut Colony, and New Haven Colony in the New England Confederation, a loose coalition organized primarily to coordinate military and administrative matters among the Puritan colonies. It was most active in the 1670s during King Philip's War. (New Hampshire had not yet been organized as a separate province, and both it and Rhode Island were excluded because they were not Puritan.)

Economy and trade

In the 1600s, the colony was highly dependent on imports from England and was supported by the investments of a number of wealthy immigrants. Certain businesses were quick to thrive, notably shipbuilding, fisheries, and the fur and lumber trades. As early as 1632, when the Blessing of the Bay was completed, ships built in the colony began trading with other colonies, England, and foreign ports in Europe. By 1660, the colony's merchant fleet was estimated at 200 ships and, by the end of the century, its shipyards were estimated to turn out several hundred ships annually. In the early years, the fleet principally carried fish to destinations from the West Indies to Europe. It was common for a merchant to ship dried fish to Portugal or Spain, pick up wine and oil for transport to England, and then carry finished goods from England or elsewhere back to the colony. This and other patterns of trade became illegal following the introduction of the Navigation Acts in 1651, turning colonial merchants who continued these trading patterns into de facto smugglers. Many colonial authorities were merchants or were politically dependent on them, and they opposed being required by the crown to collect duties imposed by those acts. In 1652, Massachusetts General Court authorized John Hull and Robert Sanderson to begin producing coinage for the colony.

The fur trade only played a modest role in the colony's economy because its rivers did not connect its centers well with the Indians who engaged in fur trapping. Timber began to take on an increasingly important role in the economy, especially for naval purposes, after conflicts between England and the Dutch depleted England's supplies of ship masts.

The colony's economy depended on the success of its trade, in part because its land was not as suitable for agriculture as that of other colonies such as Virginia, where large plantations could be established. The fishery was important enough that those involved in it were exempted from taxation and military service. Larger communities supported craftsmen skilled in providing many of the necessities of 17th century life. Some income-producing activities took place in the home, such as carding, spinning, and weaving of wool and other fibers.

Goods were transported to local markets over roads that were sometimes little more than widened Indian trails. Towns were required to maintain their roads, on penalty of fines, and the colony required special town commissions to lay out roads in a more sensible manner in 1639. Bridges were fairly uncommon, since they were expensive to maintain, and fines were imposed on their owners for the loss of life or goods if they failed. Consequently, most river crossings were made by ferry. Notable exceptions were a bridge across the Mystic River constructed in 1638, and another over the Saugus River, whose upkeep costs were subsidized by the colony.

The colonial government attempted to regulate the economy in a number of ways. On several occasions, it passed laws regulating wages and prices of economically important goods and services, but most of these initiatives did not last very long. The trades of shoe-making and coopering (barrel-making) were authorized to form guilds, making it possible to set price, quality, and expertise levels for their work. The colony set standards governing the use of weights and measures. For example, mill operators were required to weigh grain before and after milling, to ensure that the customer received back what he delivered (minus the miller's percentage).

The Puritan dislike of ostentation led the colony to also regulate expenditures on what it perceived as luxury items. Items of personal adornment, particularly lace and costly silk outerwear, were frowned about. Attempts to ban these items failed, and the colony resorted to laws restricting their display to those who could demonstrate £200 in assets.

Demographics

Most of the people who arrived during the first 12 years emigrated from two regions of England. Many of the colonists came from the county of Lincolnshire and East Anglia, northeast of London, and a large group also came from Devon, Somerset, and Dorset in the southwest of England. These areas provided the bulk of the migration, although colonists also came from other regions of England. The pattern of migration often centered around specific Nonconformist clergy who sought to leave England under threat from Archbishop Laud, who encouraged their flock to accompany them. One characteristic unique to the New England colonies (as distinguished from some of the other English colonies) was that most of the immigrants were emigrating for religious and political reasons, rather than economic ones.

The preponderance of the immigrants were well-to-do gentry and skilled craftsmen. They brought with them apprentices and servants, the latter of whom were sometimes in indentured servitude. Few titled nobility emigrated, even though some supported the emigration politically and financially and also acquired land holdings in Massachusetts and other colonies. Merchants also represented a significant proportion of the immigrants, often the children of the gentry, and they played an important role in establishing the economy of the colony.

With the start of the English Civil War in 1642, emigration came to a comparative standstill, and some colonists even returned to England to fight for the Parliamentary cause. In the following years, most of the immigrants came for economic reasons; they were merchants, seamen, and skilled craftsmen. Following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the colony also saw an influx of French Protestant Huguenots. During the period of the charter colony, small numbers of Scots immigrated, but these were assimilated into the colony. The population of Massachusetts remained largely English in character until the 1840s.

Slavery existed but was not widespread within the colony. Some Indians captured in the Pequot War were enslaved, with those posing the greatest threat being transported to the West Indies and exchanged for goods and slaves. Governor John Winthrop owned a few Indian slaves, and Governor Simon Bradstreet owned two black slaves. The Body of Liberties enacted in 1641 included rules governing the treatment and handling of slaves. Bradstreet reported in 1680 that the colony had 100 to 120 slaves, but historian Hugh Thomas documents evidence suggesting that there may have been a somewhat larger number.

Geography

The Massachusetts colony was dominated by its rivers and coastline. Major rivers included the Charles and Merrimack, as well as a portion of the Connecticut River, which has been used to transport furs and timbers to Long Island Sound. Cape Ann juts into the Gulf of Maine, providing harbors for fishermen plying the fishing banks to the east, and Boston's harbor provided secure anchorage for seagoing commercial vessels. Development in Maine was restricted to coastal areas, and large inland areas remained under native control until after King Philip's War, particularly the uplands in what is now Worcester County.

Boundaries

The colonial charter specified that the boundaries were to be from three miles (4.8 km) north of the Merrimack River to three miles south of the southernmost point of the Charles River and thence westward to the "South Sea" (i.e., the Pacific Ocean). At the time, the course of neither of the rivers was known for any significant length, which eventually led to boundary disputes with the colony's neighbors. The colony's claims were large, but the practicalities of the time meant that they never actually controlled any land further west than the Connecticut River valley. The colony also claimed additional lands by conquest and purchase, further extending the territory that it administered.

The southeastern boundary with the Plymouth Colony was first surveyed in 1639 and accepted by both colonies in 1640. It is known in Massachusetts as the "Old Colony Line", and is still visible as the boundary between Norfolk County to the north and Bristol and Plymouth Counties to the south.

The northern boundary was originally thought to be roughly parallel to the latitude of the mouth of the Merrimack River, since the river was assumed to flow primarily west. This was found not to be the case and, in 1652, Governor Endicott sent a survey party to locate the northernmost point on the Merrimack. At the point where the Pemigewasset River, the Merrimack's principal tributary, meets the Winnipesaukee River local Indians guided the party to the outlet of Lake Winnipesaukee, incorrectly claiming that as the Merrimack's source. The survey party carved lettering into a rock there (now called Endicott Rock), and its latitude was taken to be the colony's northern boundary. When extended eastward, this line was found to meet the Atlantic near Casco Bay in present-day Maine.

Following this discovery, the colonial magistrates began proceedings to bring existing settlements under their authority in southern New Hampshire and Maine. This extension of the colonial claim conflicted with several proprietary grants owned by the heirs of John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The Mason heirs pursued their claims in England, and the result was the formation of the Province of New Hampshire in 1679. The current boundary between Massachusetts and New Hampshire was not fixed until 1741. In 1678, the colony purchased the claims of the Gorges heirs, gaining control over the territory between the Piscataqua and Kennebec Rivers. The colony and later the province and state retained control of Maine until it was granted statehood in 1820.

The colony performed a survey in 1642 to determine its southern boundary west to the Connecticut River. This line, south of the present boundary, was protested by Connecticut, but stood until the 1690s, when Connecticut performed its own survey. Most of today's Massachusetts boundaries with its neighbors were fixed in the 18th century. The most significant exception was the eastern boundary with Rhode Island, which required extensive litigation, including Supreme Court rulings, before it was finally resolved in 1862.

Lands which had previously belonged to the Pequots to the southwest were divided after the Pequot War in present-day Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut. Claims were disputed in this area for many years, particularly between Connecticut and Rhode Island. Massachusetts administered Block Island and the area around present-day Stonington, Connecticut, as part of these spoils of war, and was one of several claimants to land in what was known as Narragansett Country (roughly Washington County, Rhode Island). Massachusetts lost these territories in the 1660s, when Connecticut and Rhode Island received their royal charters.

Timeline of settlement

• Weymouth (Wessagusset): 1622 as part of Plymouth Colony; part of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630
• Gloucester: 1623 (Dorchester Company)
• Chelsea: 1624
• Braintree: 1625
• Quincy: 1625
• Naumkeag (later Salem): 1626 (Dorchester Company)
• Beverly: 1626 (originally a part of Salem, incorporated separately in 1668)
• Duxbury, Massachusetts; settled in 1627 as part of Plymouth Colony, incorporated in 1637
• Charlestown: 1628 (first capital, now part of Boston)
• Lynn: 1629
• Saugus: 1629
• Manchester-by-the-Sea (Jeffery's Creek): 1629
• Marblehead: 1629 (settled as a plantation of Salem, incorporated separately in 1639)
• Boston: 1630 (from Shawmut and Trimountaine)
• Medford: 1630
• Mystic (now part of Malden): 1630
• Everett: 1630 (settlement)
• Watertown: 1630 (on land now part of Cambridge)
• Newtowne (now Cambridge): 1630 (near Harvard Square)
• Roxbury: 1630 (now part of Boston)
• Dorchester: 1630 (now part of Boston)
• Newton: 1630
• Marshfield: 1632
• Ipswich: 1633
• Milton: 1634
• Attleboro: 1634
• Agawam: 1635 (Settled as Agawam Plantation and originally administered by the Connecticut Colony; defected to Massachusetts with Springfield in 1640)
• Concord: 1635
• Hingham: 1635
• Newbury: 1635
• Dedham: 1635 (settled as Contentment, renamed Dedham and incorporated in 1636)
• Winthrop: 1635
• Menotomy (now Arlington, then part of Newtowne): 1635
• Scituate: 1636
• Andover: 1636 (split into Andover and North Andover in 1856)
• Springfield: 1636 (settled as Agawam Plantation and originally administered by the Connecticut Colony; defected to Massachusetts and renamed Springfield in 1640)
• Taunton: 1637
• Brookline: 1638 (settled as Muddy River, considered part of Boston until it was renamed Brookline and incorporated in 1705)
• Rowley: 1638
• Salisbury: 1638
• Reading: 1639 (Lynn Village, renamed and incorporated as Reading in 1644)
• Sandwich: 1639 (first settled in 1637)
• Sudbury: 1639
• Winchester: 1640 (founded as part of Charlestown, incorporated as Waterfield in 1640, incorporated 1850)
• Chicopee: 1640 (settled as Nayasett)
• Haverhill: 1640
• Malden: 1640 (founded as part of Charlestown, incorporated separately in 1649)
• Woburn: 1640
• Methuen: 1642 (founded as part of Haverhill, incorporated separately in 1725)
• Longmeadow: 1644
• Andover: 1646 (original settlement is now in North Andover)
• Framingham: 1647
• Natick: 1651
• Eastham: 1651
• Medfield: 1651
• Billerica: 1653 (Founded as Shawshin, incorporated in 1655)
• Chelmsford: 1653 (incorporated in 1655)
• Lancaster: 1653
• Lowell: 1653 (Founded as East Chelmsford, was formally incorporated in 1826)
• Northampton: 1654 (incorporated in 1653)
• Groton: 1655
• Dunstable: 1656
• Hadley: 1659
• Middleton: 1659
• Holliston: 1659
• Marlborough: 1660
• Westfield: 1660
• West Springfield: 1660
• Brookfield: 1660
• Milford: 1662
• Mendon: 1667
• Middleborough: 1669
• Deerfield: 1673
• Worcester: 1673

Notable people

• Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) religious figure Historian Michael Winship, author of two books about her, has called her "the most famous—or infamous—English woman in colonial American history".
• John Oliver (c. 1616, died 1646), Puritan minister

Presidential legacy

The posterity of the Massachusetts Bay Colony would go on to have an outsized influence on American politics, with thirteen presidents of the United States tracing their patrilineal ancestry back to settlers of the colony. The presidents include John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, James A. Garfield, Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush.