Home > My Ancestors > English > Timeline: 1620-1749

• 1620: Pilgrims breaking away from the Church of England sail to the new American colony on the Mayflower.
• 1624:Samuel Maverick from Devon, England establishes Winnisimmet (presently Chelsea), one of the earliest settlements in the Boston Harbor. In 1833, he settles East Boston.
• 1626: After emigrating from East Budleigh, Devonshire to Plymouth, Roger Conant (1592-1679) moves north to Naumkeag where he founds the town renamed Salem. Conant soon gives up authority and the governorship to the Massachusetts Bay Company.
• 1629: Puritan lawyer and landowner John Winthrop (1588-1649) emigrates from Boston, England and is elected the first governor of the Massachusetts colony.
• 1630: Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony establish Boston after a short stay in Charlestown. The name Boston comes from a town in Lincolnshire, England from which many of the Puritans came.
• 1630-1643: The Great Migration: 200 vessels bring more than 20,000 English Puritans into Massachusetts. Their settlement is part of a larger movement west across all of Europe. During this period, approximately 2% of the population of Great Britain (80,000 people) emigrates. More than two-thirds of the Puritans come from East Anglia, the West Country, and the London area. The Puritan migration differed from the rest of colonial settlement, giving New England a distinctive character. Puritans migrated in family groups, brought a more learned society, held common religious (Calvinist) views, and endorsed social hierarchy. Immigrants into the region adopt these traits and represent what will be called "Yankee." The term, even before the American Revolution, denotes social and cultural identity not racial or ethnic identity. Indeed, the small numbers of Germans and Scot-Irish who move into New England adopt these English and Yankee mannerism to become both genteel and American.
• 1630-1680: Puritans found towns throughout Massachusetts and New England. Many historians believe that the population remained mostly homogenous English Puritans; however, during the Puritan Commonwealth in England (c. 1640-60), many Puritans returned to England and Puritan emigration from England virtually stopped.
• 1634: Samuel Cole’s Inn opens on Washington Street and is the first tavern in Boston. It is later renamed Ship Tavern, and the Great Fire of 1711 starts in the rear of the tavern.
• 1636: Harvard College is founded in Newtown (now Cambridge).
• 1637: Samuel Lincoln, ancestor of President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) emigrates from East Anglia as an indentured servant to Hingham, Massachusetts.
• 1637: Puritans in Boston condemn and exile Anne Hutchinson (English émigré and lay preacher) for not following religious dogma. The Puritans had already exiled Roger Williams, the founder of the Rhode Island colony, and would continue to practice religious intolerance.
• 1647: Public education is legislated to fight against "Ye Old Deluder Satan." The Puritans value education and establish mandatory education early in their settlement.
• 1653: The first public library in the British-American colonies is established in Boston.
• 1675-1676: King Philip’s War —New Englanders lose 10% of the male population and suppress Native American resistance to European settlement.
• 1686-1689: Boston and Massachusetts are under the control of British Governor Edmund Andros (1637-1714).
• 1687: The first Anglican Church in Boston begins services on land taken by Governor Andros (on the site of the present Kings Chapel).
• 1690: 90% of North American colonists are of English descent.
• 1691: The new Boston charter incorporates Plymouth.
• 1692-1693: Witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts commented on throughout the colony; some cases tried in Boston.
• 1708: The town of Boston rules that all strangers must post bond or leave town in an effort to evict paupers and newly arrived unskilled laborers. It raises the bond to 200 Pounds in the 1720s and maintains the fee into the 1730s.
• 1717: Britain begins transporting felons to the colonies where some become unskilled labor in New England.
• 1718: British ships with indentured servants are turned away from Boston.
• 1740: English preacher George Whitefield (1714-1770) ignites the Great Awakening in Massachusetts. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) of Northampton, Massachusetts is the other major figure in this religious revival.

See 1750-1849