Six states began as Pilgrim and Puritan tax rebels
New England groups Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island in the Northeastern United States, east of New York and south of New Brunswick and Quebec. Plymouth Colony, founded in 1620, was British America’s second lasting settlement after Jamestown, and Puritans added Massachusetts Bay a decade later.
Boston, the Massachusetts capital, is the largest city, and its combined statistical area with Worcester and Providence holds more than half the region’s people. A slim coastal plain covers the southeast, while worn Appalachian hills fill the west and north. The Atlantic fall line runs near the shore, so mills sprang up on rivers such as the Connecticut, which splits the region north to south. Towns, many still run by town meetings, are the basic unit, and it is the only multi-state census division with fixed borders.
People arrived at least 10,500 years ago, soon after the ice retreated. Colonists met Eastern Algonquian speakers including the Abenaki, whose main town was Norridgewock, the Penobscot, Narragansett, Pequot, Mohegan and Wampanoag, who held Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. From about 1600 French, Dutch and English traders swapped metal, glass and cloth for beaver pelts, and ten tribes hold federal recognition today.
John Smith coined the name in 1616, and a royal charter confirmed it on 3 November 1620. The Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact aboard ship, Boston was founded in 1630, and Roger Williams, banished for his beliefs, started Providence Plantations in 1636. The Pequot War of 1637 brought the Mystic massacre, four colonies formed a defensive confederation on 19 May 1643, and King Philip’s War raged from 1675 to 1678. James II imposed the Dominion of New England in 1686, but Bostonians ousted Governor Edmund Andros in 1689.
Resistance to British taxes produced the Boston Tea Party, the Intolerable Acts and the 1775 fighting at Lexington and Concord; the British left Boston in March 1776. Vermont abolished slavery in 1777 and Massachusetts in 1783. Vermont joined the Union in 1791, Maine split from Massachusetts on 15 March 1820, and mills along the Blackstone and Merrimack made the region America’s first industrial heartland.
Source: New England
