People of Colonial Massachusetts: The Puritan Founders

Colonial Massachusetts (1620–1691: Plymouth & Massachusetts Bay) was overwhelmingly settled by English Puritans—a religious movement seeking to "purify" the Church of England from within, who became separatists when reform failed.

Who They Were

• Origins: East Anglia, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire — "the Puritan heartland"
• Migration: 1620 (Mayflower, 102), 1630 (Winthrop Fleet, 700+), 1630s "Great Migration" (~20,000)
• Demographics: Nuclear families, skilled artisans, yeoman farmers, merchants. Literate (90%+ male literacy).
• Theology: Calvinist — predestination, covenant theology, congregational polity, "city upon a hill"

Daily Life & Values

Work as Worship

Labor was a calling. Idleness was sin. This "Protestant work ethic" drove agricultural improvement, craft specialization, and maritime trade.

Community & Governance

• Town meeting: direct democracy for freemen (church members)
• Church = civic center; meetinghouse doubled as town hall
• Strict moral codes: Sabbath observance, sumptuary laws, no Christmas (until 1681)
• Dissent punished: Quakers whipped, banished, hanged (Mary Dyer, 1660); Antinomians (Anne Hutchinson) exiled

Education

1647 Old Deluder Satan Act: towns ≥50 families = elementary school; ≥100 = grammar school. Harvard founded 1636. Literacy for Bible reading.

Evolution & Diversity

By 1691 (new charter), Massachusetts included:
• Non-Puritan Anglicans, Baptists, Quakers
• Enslaved Africans (~1,000 by 1700) and Indigenous people
• Maine district, Plymouth Colony merged
• Royal governor appointed — theocracy eroding

Legacy

Puritan imprint: town meeting, public education, contractual government, moral exceptionalism, literary tradition (Bradstreet, Taylor, Mather). Not monolithic—debated grace, liberty, and authority from day one.