Title: Massachusetts Bay Colony
Headings: Massachusetts Bay Colony
Massachusetts Bay Colony
Content: Through this action the Massachusetts Bay venture was transformed from a trading company into an organization dominated by staunch Puritans with a religious agenda. Political power in the new colony was limited to fellow believers, effectively creating a theocracy (a government run by religious officials who would enforce religious principles). The Great Migration Beginning in 1630, Governor John Winthrop, with the company charter tightly in hand, guided the arrival of nearly 1000 colonists to the New World. The initial parties stopped first at Salem, but soon established a permanent settlement on the Shawmut Peninsula of Massachusetts Bay (later to be called Boston ). Initially, circumstances were extremely difficult - approximately 200 settlers died the first year and a similar number returned to England in the spring of 1631. Gradual improvements in living conditions led to an influx of new colonists, mainly English Puritans, that totaled more than 20,000 over the next decade. New settlements soon fanned out from Boston — Newtown (later Cambridge ), Lexington, Concord, Watertown, Charlestown, Dorchester, and others dotted the map. Massachusetts differed markedly from Plymouth, its neighbor 40 miles to the south. The Puritan immigrants, as a whole, had been more prominent in England and were more highly educated. All classes, from gentleman to common laborer, were represented.