The Handy Boston Answer Book. Samuel Willard Crompton
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special about Boston to the Puritans who arrived in 1630?
The landscape was pleasant, and it reminded them of aspects of life back home in Old England. The key thing, though, was Boston’s superb geographic location. Located at the inner corner of the great bay from which Massachusetts gains its name, Boston was a peninsula of about 840 square acres, connected to the mainland at Roxbury. This means Boston was ideally situated for trade, both from inland areas and from the Atlantic Ocean.
How and when did the first Puritan settlers arrive?
In the spring of 1630, the so-called Winthrop Fleet—named for Governor John Winthrop—departed England. The fifteen or so vessels carried nearly 1,200 settlers, making this the largest English attempt yet to settle in New England. Arriving at Salem, which had been established in 1627, the Winthrop Fleet then moved on to what is now Charlestown, just on the other side of the Charles River from Boston’s North End. In late August of 1630, a few dozen settlers crossed the Charles for the first time. They came in search of blueberries and strawberries, but the single most important item on their agenda was fresh water.
The Puritans were in luck. The Native American name for Boston was Shawmut, meaning place of the beautiful spring. Historians continue—right to this day—to dispute the precise location of the spring that produced such fine fresh water, but it was, quite likely, on the northwest side of what is now Beacon Hill. Speaking of “the Hill,” one should note that the Puritans briefly called the place TriMountain—in honor of its three hills—before renaming it Boston in honor of the town in Lincolnshire from which many of them came.
What did Boston look like to the first settlers, those that arrived in 1630?
The peninsula that the Native Americans called Shawmut was about three-fifths the size of today’s downtown Boston. Shawmut resembled a five-leaf clover, jutting out from the mainland at what is now Roxbury. To the Puritans who first arrived in 1630 Shawmut seemed an oddly shaped place, and perhaps ungainly too, but it had the great advantage of possessing excellent fresh water. In fact, Shawmut means “place of the beautiful spring.”
What those first Puritan explorers, and settlers, found was a peninsula tucked into the farthest corner of what we now call the Massachusetts Bay, the geographic formation from which Massachusetts gains its name. They knew their ships would be safe in the anchorage—at least ninety percent of the time—and yet they were still positioned in a way that maximized their contact with the open sea. It made sense for the Puritans to settle Boston, which they first named TriMountain.
How did Beacon Hill gain prominence?
A long time passed before Beacon Hill became the fashionable part of town, or the site of the Massachusetts State House. When the Puritans arrived in September 1630 they called the area TriMountain because it had three protruding hills, which, over time, were named Fort Hill, Copp’s Hill, and Beacon Hill. Beacon Hill was named after the wooden beacon erected there in order to warn against attack. An iron pot at the top of this beacon was always ready to be spilled and light a fire, warning people about an attack with a flame that could be seen for miles around. Interestingly enough, the beacon was never used.
For perhaps the first week, the settlers called the area TriMountain, and it seemed that this might become the name, but when they wrote their first documents, the Puritans renamed it Boston in honor of the town in Lincolnshire from which many of them hailed. Boston, England, is itself believed to be a corruption of the words St. Botolph’s Town, and there is a St. Botolph’s Club in Boston today.
Does the name TriMountain live on in any part of Boston?
It does indeed. Tremont Street, which runs right through the most packed and exciting part of the city today, is named after the original TriMountain.
Do we have any idea what early Puritan settlers looked like?
Puritans were not great visual artists, and most of our representations of them therefore come from nineteenth-century artists, who attempted to depict their ancestors. The image of “The Puritan” also comes to us from the prose writings of authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. We have no reason to doubt the basic veracity of these descriptions. The Puritans, as well as their Pilgrim cousins in Plymouth, favored stiff hats and dark clothing. Whether their faces were as grim and hard-set as the sculptors suggest is difficult to say. One thing is for certain. These early Puritans—who became the first Bostonians—believed in hard work and rising in the world. Quite likely, they would applaud if they could see what Boston looks like in our time.
Is there any truth to the story of Ann Pollard?
We think so. Decades after the first landing of the Puritans on the north side of the Shawmut peninsula, old Ann Pollard told her grandchildren and great-grandchildren of how she stepped out of the first boat and gingerly came ashore. She recounted the event with great pride and enthusiasm, declaring that she had foraged for strawberries and blueberries all day, and with some success. She was nine or ten in 1630, and she lived to the remarkable age of 105. A painting of her, executed in her old age, hangs today in the Massachusetts Historical Society on Boylston Street. And Pollard’s story naturally begs another question: What were the Puritan women like?
This bronze plaque on Boston Common celebrates the landing of the first Puritan settlers in 1630. Ann Pollard is shown at center right.
If the Puritan men are shadowy figures, available to us mostly through poetry and old wives’ tales, then the Puritan women are even less accessible. We do know that they came in numbers roughly equal to the men, and that the Puritans were great believers in large families: the population of “Shawmut-Boston” began growing right away. Families of eight, nine, or ten children were not unusual, and the large number of offspring testifies to the idea that the Puritans expected to lose many of their children to disease. Fortunately, this proved not to be the case.
Why was Boston—and New England in general—so much healthier than the Middle and Southern colonies?
The terrible New England winters—which continue to strike us with great force today—form a large part of the answer. The cold and freeze that sometimes comes in the last week of November and often lasts till the second week of April means that many types of insects that carry disease don’t survive. Beyond this, New Englanders developed a stronger medical tradition than their Southern counterparts. As a result, a larger percentage of the population of youngsters survived, and New England’s population expanded much more rapidly than it did in most of the southern colonies. One can, perhaps, push the point too far, but it’s worth noting that Boston—in modern times—has become the location of more fine hospitals than any other city of comparable size.
What happened to the Native Americans who lived on the peninsula which they called Shawmut?
Though no one will claim that the Puritans were “nice” or “kind” to the Native Americans, it has to be said that there was no violent takeover or expulsion of the Indians. When the Puritan settlers arrived in September 1630 they found only one person living on Shawmut. He was the Reverend William Blackstone—for whom the Blackstone River is named—and he lived a solitary existence on the peninsula. It is quite possible there were Native Americans on the peninsula in earlier times, but also quite certain that none were living there in 1630.
THE FIRST GOVERNMENT
Did the Puritans of Boston establish a democracy, a theocracy, or an oligarchy?
This is one of the great and controversial questions with no definitive answer. Some historians argue that the Puritans quickly established a theocracy, a system in which the ministers or priests ruled. Others contend that Boston was really an oligarchy, a system in which the wealthy—merchants especially—dominated. Still others examine the same set of data and conclude that Boston was more democratic than almost any other town among the early American colonies.
The best answer is that the Puritans believed in a system of