Ezekiel Richardson, with his wife Susanna, joined the Protestant Church in the Village of Charlestown, Mass.—now Boston—in 1630. The following year Thomas and Samuel Richardson joined the same church; the records of the will of Ezekiel prove them to have been his brothers.
When they came to New England, or where from, is unknown, but as about thirty ships of British emigrants came into Boston Harbor about that time, it is safe to assume that they came on one of these vessels, but possibly they may have come on one of the boats which followed the Mayflower nearly ten years previous.
It appears that there arose dissensions in the church and those good Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers strove among themselves until 1634, when the three Richardsons, with several other families, withdrew and decided to start a colony and a church of their own, where they could worship God in peace.
WOBURN
Through a swamp on the west, called Cat Bird Glen, ran a trout brook to the meadows below. Beyond this woodland glen lay an upland plain, held by the Indians as a camping ground, which the Richardsons concluded they might, through the persuasion of powder and bullets, be able to occupy and leave the parent church at Charlestown to mourn their departure.
Accordingly about twenty families, including the Richardsons, took possession of the site, dug their cellars, and built primitive homes together with a log church and named the town Woburn.
Joy mingled with pride encouraged the men to subdue the soil, hunt, snare and trap the game and fish, while the buxom dames hummed their spinning wheels as they cooed their frolicsome babies beneath the shadows of the great forest monarchs who seemed loath to give way to the encroaching steps of the white man.
Contrary to the general rule, that rats and ministers advance hand in hand with civilization, in this case the ministers failed to appear for the reason that the home church of England refused to recognize the seceders as children of God by turning down their supplication for a regular ordained preacher.