"Even more shocking to me was to find out that the person who passed judgment on them was my own ninth great grandfather, Puritan and first Governor of
Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Endicott.
America itself was built up on the settlement of refugees who were fleeing religious persecution, seeking a new life, and went on to found the
Massachusetts Bay Colony. If we close our doors (especially if we did so based on religious grounds) we have ceased being the land of the free.
This lively account of the Marquis de Lafayette and the American Revolution is of a piece with Vowell's previous books, which include Assassination Vacation (2005), a tour of sites dedicated to murdered American presidents, and The Wordy Shipmates (2008), a raucous look at the founding of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony. These seem like sober subjects, but Vowell enlivens the proceedings with her prickly persona, her thing for slang and her taste for recondite factoids of Americana.
John Winthrop's use of the biblical "city upon a hill" to describe the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, for example, was a reminder to fellow Puritans to be good examples of Puritanism for their co-religionists back home.
Merchants, shipwrights, and pirate hunters, the Rainborowes (also spelled Rainsborowe or Rainsborough) were part of an extensive Puritan network that included John Winthrop, the first governor of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Hugh Peter, a chaplain in the New Model Army.
In 1638, religious dissident Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the
Massachusetts Bay Colony for defying Puritan orthodoxy.
Since an allusion to the disciple Paul's conversion vision is embedded in the official seal of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, this reference implicitly suggests "that the entire colonial enterprise in New England was based on a dream." Despite the prominence of this colonial seal, Plane observes, "the full significance of dream narratives in unlocking the religious, social, cultural, and emotional history of colonial societies has yet to be explored" by historians.
The idea extends as far back as 1630, when John Winthrop, the
Massachusetts Bay Colony's first governor, declared that his community must act as a "city upon a hill," setting an example for the world.
William Bradford, governor of
Massachusetts Bay Colony, in the 1650 writing, A Descriptive and Historical Account of New England in Verse, mentions cucumbers as among vegetables grown in the colony's gardens.
The pine tree is also featured in the first coin ever minted by any of the colonies--the
Massachusetts Bay Colony Pine Tree Shilling was minted from 1652 to 1683.
Patriot's day is public holiday in Massachusetts and Maine, which are part of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony. In the State of Wisconsin, April 19 is a special day for schools.
Called the Bay Psalm Book, it was printed on a press shipped from London and distributed among the
Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Massachusetts Bay Colony - one of the British colonies that formed the United States