This episode continues to travel over well-trodden ground as we explore the founding and settling of the Massachusetts Bay colony. We cover the colonies before the Massachusetts, the impetus for the massive migration, the regional characteristics of the new arrivals, and the tumultuous first couple decades. There is plenty of intrigue in the courts, religious jockeying, and a bloody and disastrous war to discuss.
The expansion of the Puritan colonies in New England is what many generations of Americans have learned as the beginning of American history. This is not so in my AP notes, as we have seen already. However, the Puritans are covered very heavily, more so than their southern counterparts in Virginia. Nevertheless, there are lots of details that are missed in the rapidly paced, and often broad, AP notes.
We’ll have to dig deep in this episode to fill in those missing pages.
Music
Intro: Fractured Timeline - Sémø
Outro: We Won’t Survive - Assaf Ayalon
Sources
Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul - John M. Barry
Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America - David Hackett Fischer
American Jezebel - Eve LaPlante
A Stranger Among Saints: Stephen Hopkins, the Man Who Survived Jamestown and Saved Plymouth - Jonathan Mack
American Colonies: The Settling of North America - Alan Taylor
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