In March of , the Massachuset tribe submitted themselves to the colony and agreed to take religious instruction. Eliot set up "praying towns" in the colony, isolated settlements such as Natick established , where newly converted people could live separated from both English settlers and independent Indigenous peoples. The settlements were organized and laid out like an English village, and the residents were subject to a legal code that required that traditional practices be replaced by those proscribed in the Bible.
The praying towns roused dissent in the European settlements, and in , the settlers accused the missionaries and their converts of treason. All of the Indigenous peoples professing loyalty to the English were rounded up and placed on Deer Island without adequate food and shelter. King Philip's War broke out in , an armed conflict between English colonists and the Indigenous people led by Metacomet — , the Wampanoag chief who had adopted the name "Philip.
However, by , the converts who had not been killed, sold into enslavement, or driven northward, found themselves restricted to praying towns that were essentially reservations for people reduced to live as servants and tenant farmers. Massachusetts played a key role in the American Revolution. Parliament reacted by passing acts to control the colony, including a naval blockade of the harbor.
On April 19, , Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, were the sites of the first shots fired in the Revolutionary War. After this, the colonists laid siege to Boston, which the British troops held. The siege eventually ended when the British evacuated in March The war continued for seven more years with many Massachusetts volunteers fighting for the Continental Army.
Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Each village consisted of houses, a community garden and a meetinghouse to host church services. Schools were also 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 , the four colonies formed a military alliance, known as the New England Confederation , to help defend themselves from Native American attacks. In , the Massachusetts Bay Colony tried and executed an accused witch for the first time. The accused was a midwife named Margaret Jones from Charlestown and she was hanged at Gallows Hill in Boston after she was accused by some of her patients.
Diseases brought by the colonists started to ravage the Native American population. By , about 90 percent of the Native Americans living in New England died due to disease.
The Native Americans that survived the war either fled to the west or surrendered and were sold into slavery. While the Native American population declined, the number of colonists flourished. By , Boston had 4, residents. Colonists also declared war on local wildlife that they deemed a threat, such as the local wolf population, according to the book Disguised as the Devil: A History of Lyme Disease and Witch Accusations:.
They became the pariah of the wilderness — dark, insidious predators biting at the heels of civilization. They had a price on their heads from almost the moment of contact with the English colonists. Well nourished on deer meat, this thriving wolf population was unfortunately not discerning enough to know a domesticated animal from their wild prey.
When they began to add pork, beef, and mutton to their diet, it was not tolerated. In Salem Village was rimmed by a set of wolf traps. The last wolf bounty in Massachusetts was paid in the nineteenth century at the end of a successful eradication program that took over years to complete.
The population of Boston continued to grow in the 17th and early 18th century, despite small-pox outbreaks in , and By , Boston had over 13, residents.
From the moment they landed in the New World, the Massachusetts Bay colonists worked tirelessly to establish a government that was not only efficient but one that also reflected their personal and religious ideals, according to the book Massachusetts: Mapping the Bay State Through History:. They moved quickly to establish their political and religious — and eventually, geographical — authority, with confidence based on their religious faith and the later economic success that they took as a sign of divine consent.
Religion and government were deeply intertwined in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and only the most devout Puritans could participate in governmental affairs, according to the book Politics and Religion in the United States:.
The civil government had authority over everyone in the community, but was controlled by the minority of the population that had achieved full church membership. The Puritans were highly intolerant of other religions and came to the New World specifically to escape religious persecution and create their own community where they could live only among like-minded people. However, as Quakers kept coming, harsher punishments were introduced for them, such as cutting off their ears or boring a hole in their tongues with a hot iron — and then banishing them.
Between and , four Quakers were put to death by the Puritans. It appeared that the persecution would become even more deadly; however, in , King Charles II intervened and prohibited any corporal punishment of Quakers. After the establishment of the English Commonwealth in , the colonists also declared Massachusetts a commonwealth, although they had no authority to do so. The Cromwell government in control of England at the time did little to respond to this move.
The list of violations included establishing religious laws, discriminating against Anglicans and Quakers and running an illegal mint. Andros immediately set to work proposing new taxes, pushing aside the General Council and forbidding town meetings. In April of , when word reached Boston that King James II had been overthrown by William of Orange in the Glorious Revolution of , a mob formed in Boston and they quickly seized and ousted the royal officials and put the former Puritan leadership back in power.
In , a compromise was made over the unpopular Dominion of New England and a new charter was issued. This new charter united the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony and Maine Colony into one single colony, known as the Province of Massachusetts Bay , and called for a Royal Governor and elected assembly to be established.
This caused much anxiety among the colonists. The Puritans started to worry that their religion, and they themselves, were once again under attack.
Boston, the state capital, was a hotbed of activity, including the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party, during the American Revolution. In addition to its revolutionary spirit, the state is known for sparking the American Industrial Revolution with the growth of textile mills in Lowell, and for its large Irish-American population.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Boston, the largest city in New England, is located on a hilly peninsula in Massachusetts Bay. The region had been inhabited since at least B. Captain John Smith in explored the One of the original 13 colonies, Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn as a haven for his fellow Quakers.
New Hampshire, one of the original 13 colonies, was the first state to have its own state constitution. Constitution—the final state needed to put Initially colonized by French fur traders, Ohio became a British colonial possession following the French and Indian War in At the end of the American Revolution, Britain ceded control of the territory to the newly formed United States, which incorporated it into the
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