Chapter V: The Puritans in New England

Taking up the settlement of the colonies more in detail, we may commence with New England. The first inhabitants of Massachusetts were pre-dominantly from the eastern half of England. This contains the counties in which Nordic influence had probably been the strongest, and the early settlement of Massachusetts was by an overwhelmingly Nordic stock, judging alike by place of origin and by family and personal names. A study of the origin of the pioneers of Plymouth, Watertown, and Dedham shows that two-thirds of them came from a region along the English coast between London and the Wash and mostly from the southern part of that stretch of territory.

Although given an important position by historians because of its priority and the romantic incidents connected with its founding, Plymouth Colony, because of its small size, played only a minor part in the early development of the American nation. Its settlers, as shown by the detailed accounts available concerning many of them, were people of the lower and middle classes, mostly of good character but attracting to their numbers also adventurers and men of more doubtful quality.

Within five or six years after the landing at Plymouth Rock, the Plymouth settlers were already outnumbered by other settlers in New England, while Plymouth itself was the parent of a number of other settlements that outstripped it. During the decade 1630-40 it became a province of eight small towns, seven of them stretching for fifty miles along the shore of Cape Cod Bay, from Scituate to Yarmouth, with Taunton lying twenty-five miles inland. The entire colony would probably have moved to the Connecticut River valley, had not the competition of settlers from Massachusetts Bay been too strong. Two generations after the original settlement there the number of inhabitants of Plymouth was no greater than it was at the start.

In the decade of 1620-30 there was a rapid but sporadic settlement of small towns on or near the Massachusetts coast, but the first great migration was that represented by the arrival of Governor Winthrop's fleet in Massachusetts Bay in 1630. The new arrivals settled Boston, Charlestown, Medford, Watertown, Roxbury, Lynn, and Dorchester. During the next decade the Puritan emigration from England continued, again largely from the northern and eastern counties, overwhelmingly of as nearly pure Nordic stock as Great Britain could show.

The difference in antecedents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from that of Plymouth is reflected in the differences in geographical and social origin. The Pilgrim Fathers, as every one knows, took their start from Scrooby in Yorkshire at the point where this county joins Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire, under the leadership of Bradford, the local postmaster and Robinson the clergyman. The capital for the enterprise was almost all subscribed in London, and only one-third of the first settlers were members of Robinson's congregation. The part of Scrooby and Holland in that colony has therefore often been exaggerated. The English founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were on the other hand not merely religious dissenters, but powerful members of the Puritan nobility. The group attracted to their enterprise was therefore one of a somewhat wider social outlook. It was distinguished for the same reason from most of the later emigration.

The people who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the decade of 1630-40 doubtless had every desire to better their condition, and their zeal in seizing land from the Indians showed that they were able to put this desire into effect successfully. Their motive in emigrating, however, was more political than was that of many later colonists, most of whom came frankly to find fortune in a new country.

There were among them a sprinkling of members of the important county families and even a few representatives of the Puritan gentry. Alumni of Cambridge were liberally represented among the clergy, together with a few from Oxford, although few other professional men seem to have been in the group. Many of the settlers were from families of merchants, among whom Puritanism had made great progress in England. The bulk, however, consisted of more or less well-to-do yeomen and artisans.

Since a large part of this Puritan migration, which probably amounted to 20,000 between 1620 and 1640, came in groups often following their local clergymen, it is fairly easy to determine from what parts of Great Britain the early population of Massachusetts came. The evidence all indicates that little of it was from the far north of England where Puritanism had made comparatively slight progress. The greater proportion of the settlers came from the Puritan stronghold of East Anglia comprising the counties of Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk, and eastern Hereford. Next to this was the emigration from Wessex including Dorset, Somerset, and eastern Devon. Following came contributions from Kent, from the midland counties of Buckingham, Northampton, and Leicester, a considerable group from the borders of Wiltshire, Hampshire, and western Berkshire with some from as far west as Gloucestershire near the Welsh border. A large Boston group came from Lincolnshire (which was the home of the ancestors of the Boston-born Benjamin Franklin) and of course there was a strong contingent from London, which was largely Puritan and Presbyterian. Towns in Massachusetts tended to be settled by people who were all from the same region in England; and as the expansion of Massachusetts was very largely in the form of congregations from given towns, these populations often kept together for a long time. Frequently the town's name indicates the old home. Thus Gloucester was settled by men from that county and Dorchester was named for the town in Dorset from which its early settlers came with the Rev. John Maverick, although it contained an element of Lancashire people from the neighborhood of Preston, Liverpool, and Manchester.

Along with the desire of these settlers to better themselves, to acquire the ownership of land, and to seek fortune in new countries, the disturbed political conditions in Great Britain particularly urged Puritans to migrate. British documents of the period throw many sidelights on the nature and scope of this movement. Thus Lord Maynard, in a memorandum to Archbishop Laud in 1638, laments "the intention of divers clothiers of great trading to go suddenly into New England." He hears daily of incredible numbers of persons of very good abilities who have sold their lands to depart and says there is danger of divers parishes being impoverished.

Since some of them liked the Massachusetts government no better than the one at home, the tide of emigration turned strongly toward the West Indies, the British islands of which were rapidly filled with Nordic stock. The history of Nordic settlement in the West Indies is little known and is exceedingly instructive in connection with a study of the peopling of the New World. Bermuda was colonized in 1612, Saint Kitts in 1623, Barbadoes and Saint Croix in 1625, and Nevis three years later. By 1640 Massachusetts had about 14,000 settlers; but Saint Kitts had almost as many and Barbadoes decidedly more. The number of Englishmen who migrated to the West Indies was perhaps three times as large as the number who went to all New England.

Down to the end of the eighteenth century the West Indies were flourishing, populous, and wealthy, but these islands then ceased to have any world-wide importance--not merely because of economic and agricultural changes, such as affected the sugar industry, but because the white man in the tropics could not compete on even terms with the Negro. It will be pointed out later that these islands are now virtually Negro territory, and they have become centers of emigration into the United States of a black population of low economic and social status--the Nordics having died out, or lost their original characteristics, or gone elsewhere.

From 1640 the emigration from Great Britain to New England almost stopped and the tide turned the other way; many settlers in Massachusetts either returning to England or going to the West Indies. The natural increase of the population from then on accounts for most of the growth of the New England colonies. Even here, however, the Bay State fell behind Virginia in rate of increase of white population.

1620 TO 1640

SHOWING A TOTAL OF ABOUT 67,300

_New England 17,800_

_Maryland and Virginia 9500_

_West Indies including Bermuda about 40,000_]

Almost as soon as they had established themselves around Massachusetts Bay, groups of settlers began to push out in all directions, partly to get better or cheaper land, and partly to get greater independence of action. In this way the settlement of Connecticut was begun as early as 1634. In the next year emigrants arrived in Connecticut from Dorchester and Watertown in Massachusetts and in 1636 from Newton. They established settlements in the Connecticut River valley bearing the names of the Massachusetts towns from which they came until the names of Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford were substituted. In 1638 came the settlements at New Haven, Guilford, Milford, and elsewhere. Stratford, Fairfield, Norwalk, and Stamford were established not many months later as a challenge to the Dutch from New York who regarded that part of Connecticut as their own domain. By 1640, at least a couple of thousand settlers were in Connecticut; Hartford, New Haven, and New London becoming in their turn the main gateways of immigration into the whole back country. The settlement of New England was, in general, however, from south to north, proceeding along the river valleys.

The fisheries and the excellent supply of timber for naval construction led to scattered settlements on the coast of Maine even earlier. The lack of navigable rivers delayed penetration into the interior--but during the seventeenth century the Massachusetts people had settled along most of the river valleys. Even to this day the interior of Maine is very largely backwoods. This territory was claimed by Massachusetts as a part of its own dominion, from which it did not separate until in 1820 when it was admitted as an independent State to offset Missouri in Henry Clay's famous compromise.

As Indians were gradually dispossessed, the population of Massachusetts continued to push westward. In 1676 the end of King Philip's War removed the fear of Indians for a time and led to particularly active movements of population inland. Meanwhile settlements had been made in New Hampshire and Rhode Island. The first settlement in New Hampshire had been made by David Thomson, a Scotsman who established himself on the coast; but its population came from Plymouth Colony and later from other parts of Massachusetts. The spread of the English in the New Hampshire mountains and forests, where the Indians continued hostile for a long time, was slow, and even at the time of the Revolution, New Hampshire contained few settlements of any size. The greatest development came toward the end of the period here considered. In 1700 it held but 5000 or 6000 souls. Up to 1760 only the coast towns had any considerable population, but the peace of 1763, which finally removed the French and Indian menace, resulted in a rapid penetration of settlers largely from Connecticut. In the next fifteen years 30,000 people are said to have entered New Hampshire from Connecticut alone, and a hundred new towns had been planted.

Rhode Island already had a few settlers before Roger Williams founded Providence (1636), though that is generally regarded as the beginning of the colony. Portsmouth was founded in 1638, Newport and Warwick in 1639, and in 1644 these settlements were united under one government. Because of its small size, Rhode Island plays in a sense only a minor part in the history of the formation of the early population of North America. But it served as a place of entry for colonists from all sources, and it likewise attracted settlers from the other colonies, due to its conspicuous policy of political and religious toleration. In another way the small size of Rhode Island led to its being a source of colonization. Its available land resources were so small that large families soon exhausted them and there was no recourse except to get out of the colony. It was therefore an incubator for colonists and furnished more emigrants in proportion to its population than did other colonies which had greater resources wherewith to care for their own people. It may be said that while Massachusetts is the parent of all New England, the whole of New England is in some sense a parent of Rhode Island. In either case, the racial homogeneity of the population is conspicuous, the little groups of settlers who represented other than Nordic stock being insignificant in numbers however much they may appeal through sentiment to the pride of their descendants.

Vermont was settled late, its main occupation not coming until after the Revolution. At first a part of New Hampshire, it attracted occasional settlers from that State and its neighbors, but there could hardly be said to have been a permanent settlement until Brattleboro was founded in 1740.

The settlement of Massachusetts west of the Connecticut River began in 1725, when the Berkshires were invaded and Sheffield established. Settlers steadily pressed north and west, and gradually took possession of the territory between the Connecticut River and Lake Champlain. The Connecticut River was the first American frontier, as Alaska was the last.

At the time of the Revolution Vermont was very much of a frontier, in which a lawless and defiant lot known as the Green Mountain Boys held possession and yielded allegiance to no one. Within six weeks after the collapse of Shays's Rebellion, more than 700 families are said to have migrated from western Massachusetts into Vermont. Many New England soldiers who had fought over this ground in the Revolution had marked it as offering desirable home sites, and came into it to take up land and clear it, to bring their families, and establish isolated settlements which gradually coalesced into something like a settled country. The increasing influx of New Englanders led to the surrender of New York's claims on the territory, so that it took its place as an independent State in 1791, the first to be added to the original thirteen.

The picture of New England then is that of a community which received the bulk of its foundation stock in a very short period of time, 1620 to 1640, and almost wholly from a single source; that is, England, and specifically from the most Nordic districts of England. It was no mere figure of speech when Captain John Smith bestowed upon the region the prophetic name of New England. During the eighteenth century, scattered groups of other origins came to add themselves to the descendants of these early settlers; but in most cases they represented only drops in the bucket. Doubtless one of the reasons why the study of genealogy and the pride of ancestry have flourished most conspicuously in New England is that so large a proportion of the old population traces its ancestry back to the same period and to the same group of people. Even as early as the Revolution, the great bulk of the settlers of New England represented families that had been four or five generations on American soil.

If there was a conspicuous absence of immigrants of very distinguished families into New England at that time, it may be said, on the other hand, that the general level was sound and intelligent. The immigrant population of New England was composed of a small group of families dominant in business and the professions, and an overwhelming proportion of representatives of the English yeomanry, owners of small freeholds, whose sons often sailed ships or went to the fisheries. This same type made up the bulk of the population of the middle colonies and peopled the back country of the southern colonies. As most of the settlers in New England in the early migration were men who brought their families, the foundation stock thus established was on a better level than that in some other colonies where men arrived without bringing wives and therefore were forced to marry women of any kind whom the colony could furnish. The definitely Nordic character of New England stock, its early establishment, and the survival of the able and vigorous in a region where nature took a heavy toll of weaklings, have produced in New England a population that has left its stamp on subsequent American history as has no other group.

As to the Ulster Scots we must bear in mind that the Irish question was as serious a thorn in the side of English statesmen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as it was before or since, and numerous attempts were made to alleviate the situation, if not to end it, by the colonization of Protestant people in Ireland. In 1611, James I began to encourage the emigration of people from the lowlands of Scotland, particularly from the western part, and from the north of England, into Ulster. He looked forward to establishing in Ireland a staunch Protestant population that might ultimately outnumber the Catholics and become the controlling element politically. For this reason the settlers were picked with some care. The plan succeeded so well that in a generation or a little more, about 300,000 people had been colonized in the northern part of the island, and by the end of a century their number had risen to nearly a million.

These are the "Scotch Irish" of American history. The name is a grotesque misnomer suggesting to the popular mind a sort of hybrid origin and hybrid character which has no basis in reality. They were not Irish in any sense of the word, and while most of them were Scotch a great many were English. They are designated in this book as "Ulster Scots."

Following the planting of Ulster in the north of Ireland, there was a heavy British emigration into the east of Ireland. This was due partly to economic factors and partly to the desire of Cromwell, in his turn, to solve the Irish problem by colonization, after the precedent which James I had established. These English Protestants in eastern Ireland have too often been ignored. They, too, had nothing in common with the older Roman Catholic population of the eastern part of the Island. Many of the Protestant "Irish" were Quakers.

These adopted children of Ireland also migrated freely to the American colonies and have been assumed far too easily to have been Roman Catholics. While it is extremely difficult to arrive at exact figures on this point, there is some reason to believe that the number of Protestant English in the east of Ireland during the seventeenth century was as large as the number of Protestant Scotch in the north, and this former group contributed its quota of English population to the colonies. It was this group which imposed the English language on the Irish. Until the later 1840's the Leinster Protestants and the Ulster Presbyterians were practically the only immigrants from Ireland to this country.

The great movement of Ulster Scots to America, although of an entirely different degree of magnitude, has been perhaps second only to that from the English counties in its influence on the subsequent history of the Continent. It began in the latter part of the seventeenth century but did not reach its height until the first quarter of the eighteenth. Five shiploads arrived in the summer of 1718, giving Cotton Mather the chance to note in his diary with anticipatory pleasure the merit that would accrue to him from showing "kindness to ye indigent." Thereafter, one finds in most histories such items as "In 1719 there came one hundred and twenty Presbyterian families from the north of Ireland who settled in Massachusetts" or "In the years 1719 and 1720 more than one hundred Presbyterian families came from the north of Ireland and settled at Londonderry in New Hampshire," and so on.

The Congregationalists of the seaboard were not too hospitable to these Presbyterians, and forced them to move inland in almost every case, away from the long-settled territory over which the Boston theocracy attempted to maintain its rule, and mostly to New Hampshire and Connecticut. Londonderry recalls its origin by its name and the Scotch who settled it not only introduced their manufactures into New Hampshire but brought along with them a still more valuable importation, the so-called Irish potato, which, having been taken from South America to Ireland long before, had, in this round-about way, been brought back to its own hemisphere. Other groups went to Worcester, to Pelham, to Palmer, to Andover, and to other communities in small numbers; while many others went to Maine. The total numbers, however, were very small.

Massachusetts had a definite policy at this time of encouraging, if not requiring, immigrants of this sort to settle on the frontiers. They furnished less competition in this way and played a useful part in keeping off the Indians.

The emigration of the Scotch and North English who had been in Ulster for a generation or two or at the most for three generations, was due to discontent with their situation there. They had built up an important manufacture of woollens and linens which has ever since been famous throughout the world; but in 1698 the jealousy of rival industrialists in England led to Parliamentary legislation which crippled the industries in Ulster and threw many men out of employment. In 1704 and the following years a religious persecution of these Presbyterians was also carried on. These economic and religious handicaps were so great that after a few years of patient waiting the population gave up hope, and within half a century about half of the entire number had moved to the New World. The most important stream went into the middle and southern colonies and will be traced later.

This exodus was a cause of alarm in the old country as well as in the new. "The rumour [of going to America] has spread like a contagious distemper," laments an Irish letter writer in 1728; "and the worst is that it affects only Protestants, and reigns chiefly in the North"; while another laments that "there are now seven ships at Belfast, that are carrying off about 1000 passengers thither; and if we knew how to stop them, as most of them can get neither victuals nor work at home, it would be cruel to do it."

Reference will recur frequently to this immigration of Ulster Scots. At this point it is necessary to emphasize in the first place that it was little different in racial background from the preceding English settlement, both groups being definitely Nordic in their make-up. In the second place it was a valuable addition to the colonies in the quality and energy of its members. In the third place it was always small in proportion to the English element.

New England in 1790, regardless of numerous non-English groups, many of them of good individual quality though insignificant in total numbers, is to be considered definitely as a transplanted English population, most of which had been settled in North America so long that its habits of thought and action had become differentiated--one might say definitely American rather than English.

A third source of New England settlers during this period, small in numbers but valuable in quality, is represented by the French Huguenots who arrived for the most part in the decade or two following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

The Huguenot migration to America falls in two general epochs. From 1555, when Admiral Coligny had a vision of a Protestant France in the New World, to the Revocation in 1685 of the Edict of Nantes, the French charter of Protestant liberty, is the first epoch, during which the immigration was scattering. From 1685 up to about 1750 is the second epoch, when the Huguenots, fleeing from oppression and death, sought refuge in many countries. During this period their immigration to North America reached considerable proportions. Providence and Boston were points of entry for many, though more went to the Southern colonies, and to them many an American family of the present day is proud to trace its ancestry.

These French Huguenots seem to have come pre-dominantly from the middle class or artisan stratum of the population with a mixture of the lesser gentry. But their energy, ability, and character earned for them an important rôle in their adopted country, out of proportion to their small numbers. Unlike some of the other non-English groups they did not tend to establish colonies or settlements of their own, but scattered widely and merged freely into the general population. This was the less difficult in that they came from the most Nordic parts of France and in racial composition are scarcely to be distinguished from the English.

In the same way those northern and eastern counties of England, which supplied a large part of the migration to America, had, during the preceding century, received a continuous infusion of continental Huguenots to a total sometimes estimated as high as 250,000, who there also became by admixture and hereditary similitude indistinguishable from their neighbors.

The Indian population of New England though never great was largely exterminated by war, disease, whiskey, and the breaking up of their cultural and economic background. In the century before the settlement of Plymouth, smallpox, introduced from the Spanish Main, had flickered up and down the New England coast and had so decimated the natives that only a weakened remnant remained to oppose the Whites.

In contrast, in the eleventh century the Norsemen who attempted to found settlements on the New England coast had met with savage resistance from the natives, whom they called Skrellings.

Intermarriage between Whites and Indians was almost unknown save in the occasional case in which a colonist was carried into captivity. The antipathy of the English settlers to the Indians was far too great to lead to the sort of miscegenation which was encouraged by the French in their part of the continent, and to which reference will be made later. In the British colonies the half-breed was looked upon as an Indian, whereas in the French colonies, as generally in all Colonial countries that had the Roman imperial tradition and the Roman Catholic religion, the half-breed was assimilated to the European group. Some of the remaining Indians along the Atlantic coast mixed with the runaway Negro slaves, but few of them contributed to the white population, and the term "half-breed" was in general a term of contempt. It was not until within the life-time of those now living that an infusion of Indian blood became a subject of pride, particularly in Oklahoma, unless one makes exception for such isolated tales as the somewhat grotesque Pocahontas tradition in Virginia.

The predominant influence of Massachusetts at the time of the Revolution is easy to understand. It possessed, to an unusual degree, unity in the various fields in which unity is most valuable to a nation--unity of race, unity of language, unity of culture, unity of religion, unity of institutions--and, more than anywhere else in the United States, its unity was attained through a long-continued, independent growth on American soil.

The French and Indian menace held back the rapidly multiplying population of New England for at least a generation. The agricultural areas were carrying more population than they could support, and they were waiting for a favorable opportunity to spread out. This opportunity came in the overthrow of Montcalm at Quebec in 1759. The Peace of Paris in 1763 left the road open, and the New England population began to push north, west, and south with a vigor that was reflected in the activity of the communities at home. The succeeding half-century is correctly regarded as the golden age of New England. Its country districts were more densely populated when the first census of the United States was taken in 1790 than they have been since. The decline, which will be traced in the next section, then began and decade after decade thereafter the New England towns and villages are found in a surprisingly large percentage of cases either standing still or actually declining in number of inhabitants.

The history of American colonization is usually written only in terms of the additions to population. The subtractions from it may be no less important. Subtractions by migration westward were less significant because in many cases the frontier merely proliferated itself by sending its surplus out without diminishing its own standards or numbers.

The first national loss of population occurred after 1640 when the changing political conditions in England, and the tyranny of the Massachusetts Bay authorities, drove many people out of Massachusetts. This loss, serious as it was, is insignificant compared with the tremendous loss of superior stock at the time of the Revolution. The Loyalists made up an undetermined part of the population, perhaps as much as one-third. Those who had been most conspicuous or most active were obliged in many cases to flee, and persecution with the confiscation of their property was carried on even after the war. Most of the Loyalists who left the colonies went either to Canada or to the West Indies. Altogether the loss from this source may have been as great as 100,000 people representing on the whole a superior selection of the population. It is comparable in the racial damage done the American population with the loss which France suffered from the expulsion of the Huguenots.

By the Revolution, the colonizing impulse of New England had not merely begun to fill up western New York, as will be described shortly, but had led to the formation of speculative land companies for settlement in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania, and even on the lower Mississippi. The hard times following the Revolution led to a great increase in migration, which, in general, has been rapid in hard times, slower in periods of prosperity. Vermont, as already said, felt the impulse markedly. Maine also seems to have grown most rapidly in the decade or two following the Declaration of Independence, though Portland and Falmouth were the only towns worthy of the name. New Hampshire, likewise, slower in its development than other parts of New England, had begun to catch up by attracting those ready to better themselves by a change of location. Connecticut had made a steady growth and had fewer non-English elements than almost any other of the New England colonies, small as these elements were everywhere. The growth of Massachusetts had been largely in the interior, Boston having made less progress than many other cities. People were moving from Massachusetts to other colonies. Many were moving through Boston but not staying there. Politically and culturally important, the Hub of the Universe stagnated industrially until the beginning of the manufacturing era.