James Atherton ( 16241710) was an early settler and one of the founders of Lancaster, Massachusetts. He emigrated to the New England Colonies from the parish of Wigan, Lancashire, England in 1635. Emigration The Massachusetts Bay Colony had been founded by the owners of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which included investors in the failed Dorchester Company which had established a short-lived settlement on Cape Ann in 1623. The colony began in 1628 and was the company's second attempt at colonization. It was successful, with about 20,000 people migrating to New England in the 1630s. Atherton was part of this first wave of Puritan migration to New England (1620–1640). Atherton was a child emigrant. Biographers agree that he travelled from Lancashire to Bristol and then sailed on the James, in the company of the Reverend Richard Mather; a minister from his home town and Humphrey Atherton, an elder relative (but not a sibling). The latter would later become the mayor general of the Massachusetts Bay Colony troops. On June 4, 1635, he set sail for the New World aboard the ship James. However quotating another source, it sailed days earlier; As the ship James approached New England, a hurricane struck and it was forced to ride it out just off the coast of modern-day Hampton, New Hampshire. According to the ship's log and the Journal of Richard Mather. 1635: His life and death. 1670, the following was recorded; Atherton arrived in Boston on August 17, 1635, after weathering the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635. Arrival in Massachusetts Bay Colony He and his elder kinsman Humphrey Atherton, resided in Dorchester. He worked as a tanner and once he met the required age he went on to serve in the local militia within Captain John Whiting's Company. Move to Lancaster Atherton having become of age in Dorchester, was one of the earliest settlers of Lancaster, Massachusetts, accompanying John Prescott, who had obtained rights to settle in an area then known as Nashaway Plantation. Atherton's lot was situated on Neck Road. The precise time of early settlers arriving in Lancaster is not known. Initial lots of land had been allocated to Richard Linton, Lawrence Waters and John Ball, prior to the arrival c.1643 of Atherton and his peers; the Prescott's and the Sawyer's. Over the next seven years very little was done to advance the settlement of the Nashaway plantation. Atherton went on to