Moving - Boston, Massachussets

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Have you read the history of Boston, MA? Well, here is a brief summary for your pleasure.

A Brief History of Boston, Massachusetts

The first English immigrant to settle in Boston was the Reverend William Blackstone. He came by himself in 1629, to a peninsula by a stream, called by the local Algonquin inhabitants, Shawmet. A year later, John Winthrop and his Puritan settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, arrived to the north in Salem. Finding Salem less than desirable for a settlement, Blackstone invited Winthrop to visit Shawmut.

On September 17, 1630, Winthrop decided to make Shawmut a permanent settlement and renamed it Boston, after his hometown in Lincolnshire England. Winthrop and his followers left England to escape religious persecution and to establish a pious Puritan state. Ironically, Blackstone shortly left the colony due the harsh, intolerant society that the Puritans had created.

Citizenship in Massachusetts was restricted to church members until 1664. Dissidents like Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams were banished. Despite these facts and the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, the colony was developing representative institutions which would help form a future democratic nation.

Over the next two centuries Boston developed as a center for Puritan life. Early on, Boston began to emerge as an intellectual and educational center with the arrival of noted theologians and statesmen, and the founding of Boston Latin School and Harvard University. The first printing press in the colonies was built in Cambridge by Stephen Daye in 1639. With its excellent harbor, Boston became the leading commercial center in the colonies. Colonial Boston was a world leader in shipbuilding and the primary port of North America.