There were among them a sprinkling of members of the important county families and even a few representatives of the Puritan gentry. Alumni of Cambridge were liberally represented among the clergy, together with a few from Oxford, although few other professional men seem to have been in the group. Many of the settlers were from families of merchants, among whom Puritanism had made great progress in England. The bulk, however, consisted of more or less well-to-do yeomen and artisans.
Since a large part of this Puritan migration, which probably amounted to 20,000 between 1620 and 1640, came in groups often following their local clergymen, it is fairly easy to determine from what parts of Great Britain the early population of Massachusetts came. The evidence all indicates that little of it was from the far north of England where Puritanism had made comparatively slight progress. The greater proportion of the settlers came from the Puritan stronghold of East Anglia comprising the counties of Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk, and eastern Hereford. Next to this was the emigration from Wessex including Dorset, Somerset, and eastern Devon. Following came contributions from Kent, from the midland counties of Buckingham, Northampton, and Leicester, a considerable group from the borders of Wiltshire, Hampshire, and western Berkshire with some from as far west as Gloucestershire near the Welsh border. A large Boston group came from Lincolnshire (which was the home of the ancestors of the Boston-born Benjamin Franklin) and of course there was a strong contingent from London, which was largely Puritan and Presbyterian. Towns in Massachusetts tended to be settled by people who were all from the same region in England; and as the expansion of Massachusetts was very largely in the form of congregations from given towns, these populations often kept together for a long time. Frequently the town's name indicates the old home. Thus Gloucester was settled by men from that county and Dorchester was named for the town in Dorset from which its early settlers came with the Rev. John Maverick, although it contained an element of Lancashire people from the neighborhood of Preston, Liverpool, and Manchester.
Ulster Scot and New England origins—1, heaviest; 2, heavy; 3, light; 4, very light; 5, uncertain; 6, English definitely present.
Along with the desire of these settlers to better themselves, to acquire the ownership of land, and to seek fortune in new countries, the disturbed political conditions in Great Britain particularly urged Puritans to migrate. British documents of the period throw many sidelights on the nature and scope of this movement. Thus Lord Maynard, in a memorandum to Archbishop Laud in 1638, laments "the intention of divers clothiers of great trading to go suddenly into New England." He hears daily of incredible numbers of persons of very good abilities who have sold their lands to depart and says there is danger of divers parishes being impoverished.
Since some of them liked the Massachusetts government no better than the one at home, the tide of emigration turned strongly toward the West Indies, the British islands of which were rapidly filled with Nordic stock. The history of Nordic settlement in the West Indies is little known and is exceedingly instructive in connection with a study of the peopling of the New World. Bermuda was colonized in 1612, Saint Kitts in 1623, Barbadoes and Saint Croix in 1625, and Nevis three years later. By 1640 Massachusetts had about 14,000 settlers; but Saint Kitts had almost as many and Barbadoes decidedly more. The number of Englishmen who migrated to the West Indies was perhaps three times as large as the number who went to all New England.
Down to the end of the eighteenth century the West Indies were flourishing, populous, and wealthy, but these islands then ceased to have any world-wide importance—not merely because of economic and agricultural changes, such as affected the sugar industry, but because the white man in the tropics could not compete on even terms with the Negro. It will be pointed out later that these islands are now virtually Negro territory, and they have become centers of emigration into the United States of a black population of low economic and social status—the Nordics having died out, or lost their original characteristics, or gone elsewhere.
From 1640 the emigration from Great Britain to New England almost stopped and the tide turned the other way; many settlers in Massachusetts either returning to England or going to the West Indies. The natural increase of the population from then on accounts for most of the growth of the New England colonies. Even here, however, the Bay State fell behind Virginia in rate of increase of white population.
