Uniquely New England

One of the joys of writing historical novels is doing the research. In fact, it can be so engaging that it hinders the actual writing of the novel. Lately I’ve been investigating the Great Migration, the massive influx of (mostly) Puritans into Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630’s. Some of my ancestors were among these people, so the research fascinates me on several levels.

One thing that especially intrigues me is the commitment that Massachusetts Bay Colony had to building and supporting community. Migrants came to New England not only to acquire land but also to live in towns. These towns were organized by religious congregations. Every town in the colony had to first “gather” a church, so there was no town without a church. Nor was there any church without a town. The town, like the church, consisted of a group of people covenanting together.

Settlers weren’t allowed to simply fan out over the countryside and pick any site that looked promising. They had to be granted that land by the governing body of the colony, called the General Court. With the importance of community firmly in mind, the colony required New Englanders to settle in towns. Land was granted not to individuals but to a group of “proprietors,” who agreed to take on certain responsibilities in exchange for the privilege of dividing up the land in specified “allotments.”

Before anyone was allowed to settle in a town, the land had to be surveyed and roads laid out. This was the responsibility of the proprietors who, as a group, received the land grant. This land only became profitable when people settled there. Land was essentially worthless unless it was “productive,” in other words, cleared and farmed, which was labor-intensive work. So the proprietor’s next task was to attract new settlers to the town.

Once people arrived and agreed on the town and church covenants, the proprietors divided up the land, balancing the needs of individual freeholders with the needs of the community. They had to make sure that every family had sufficient land to sustain them so they wouldn’t become an economic burden for the town. In most towns the proprietors held much of the land in reserve for allocation to future generations.

This system effectively limited the number of settlers in each town. Proprietors established criteria for town admission, usually requiring settlers to be pious, God-fearing Christians. After the initial allocation, more settlers were allowed as needed, but they rarely stayed in that town because the latecomers weren’t entitled to any say in the future division of land.

So there was economic incentive for the latecomers to move on and become proprietors of new towns, where they could control land distribution. This meant that many families moved around a few times before permanently settling in a town. Typically, colonists would arrive in summer, spend a few weeks in the town where their ship had landed, and sought admission into a nearby town before winter. But they often didn’t stay there for long, preferring to find a place where they could become proprietors in a new town, where they would have a say not only in land allocation but in the selection of the town’s minister and selectmen.

The Puritan family I’m writing about in my novel followed this pattern. John White and his family landed in Salem and lived there for a few years before he became a proprietor in the new town of Wenham. After several prosperous years there, he moved his family yet again to the “frontier” town of Lancaster, where, as a proprietor and because of his status and wealth, he became the largest landholder in town.

In each place, he and his family were integrated into the community, supporting and supported by neighbors and friends who lived nearby. They worshipped together, met together in town meetings, and shared the particular challenges and blessings of each place. The colony’s ideological commitment to community was realized in nearly 70 towns before King Philip’s War.

The archetypal image of the picturesque New England town, where church-going neighbors help each other and work out their differences in town meetings has its roots in a history that stretches back to the Puritans. While it’s a nostalgic and for the most part outdated image, there are still daily reminders of that tradition. No one has to request the blessing of town proprietors before moving here, but the church on the common still rings out each hour for everyone to hear, the fire siren still shrieks when a neighbor’s house goes up in flames, and we spend hours at town meetings debating how to use town land. Whether we realize it or not, we’re still trying to balance our individual needs and desires with the welfare of the community in which we live.