Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

FANEUIL HALL, BOSTON.

The energetic conduct of Standish, however it may have been judged by those who were not on the spot, was, so to speak, the foundation-stone of the prosperity of the Plymouth colony, which henceforth grew with wonderful rapidity, sending out offshoots in various directions, which in their turn, became in due course parent communities. Internal difficulties with certain schismatic members, named Lyford and Oldham, were dealt with in the same rigorous manner as those with the Indians; and though the first result—condemnation of the conduct of the settlers by the London members of the Plymouth Company—seemed, by cutting off their supplies, to threaten their very existence, it resulted in the breaking up of a confederation which had long held within its heterogeneous elements the seeds of dissolution. Left entirely to their own resources, the Puritans developed new energies; and they were already carrying on a brisk trade with the Indians, when there came news of the settlement of some rival colonists on Cape Ann, which the Plymouth people considered to be within their territory.

Captain Standish was sent out to deal with the intruders, and found that they consisted of a little band of fishermen sent out by an obscure Company known as the Dorchester, and included among them, not only Lyford and Oldham of troublous memory, but also the sufferer for righteousness’ sake, Roger Conant, who had long ago left Plymouth on account of his religious opinions, and was now a leader among the new colonists. Brought face to face with his fellow-countrymen, Standish seems to have hesitated how best to deal with them, and to have been persuaded by Conant to leave them unmolested. From this slight incident arose great results. No longer in dread of their lives, Conant and his companions presently removed from the dreary shores of Cape Ann to Naumkeag, now Salem, on the mainland, and there throve so well, that the Dorchester Company was moved to send forth others to their assistance. A patent was obtained from the original New England Company, granting to its rival a tract of country between the rivers Charles and Merrimac, and to this new home a sturdy reformer named John Endicott led forth a few Puritan pilgrims in 1628. In 1629—by which time the numbers of his colony had been doubled, though by what means is not explained—Endicott was joined by John Winthrop with no less than 800 emigrants, who, after resting a while at Salem, dispersed in small parties in various directions within the limits of the territory assigned to them, some among them settling at the Indian village of Mishawan, or the Great Spring, to which the name of Charlestown had been given by a few of Endicott’s settlers a year or two before.

In the course of the ensuing year, 1630, when the Dorchester had developed into the more imposing Massachusetts Bay Company, the emigrants received many fresh additions to their numbers; and early in the summer a little party moved from Charlestown to Shawmut Point, where the modern city of Boston now stands. The capital of Massachusetts—which still retains in its quaint, irregular streets something of the impress of its rugged founders, the Puritans—was begun, says Bryant, in a frolic, the first settlers to land on its beach having been a boat-load of young people, who, after a playful struggle as to who should first disembark, yielded that honor to “Anne Pollard, a lively young girl, the first white woman who ever stepped on the spot” so memorable in the history of the United States.

HOUSE IN BOSTON WHERE THE TEA PLOT IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE ORIGINATED.

The earliest settlement of Europeans at Shawmut was begun in August, 1630, and was at first called Tri-mountain, on account of the three summits then crowning one of the high hills overlooking the harbor, and which, now known as Beacon Hill, bears the imposing State House. On the 7th September, the settlement being then considerably advanced, it was resolved that it should be called Boston, in memory of the city of that name in Lincolnshire, from which many of its inhabitants had come. To complete the early history of Boston, we must add that its site, with all the surrounding country, was claimed by a certain Blackstone, an Englishman, who had long before settled near a “fountain of sweet waters,” which in those days bubbled up somewhere on the present Common. His title as original occupier was considered to be superseded by the royal grant to the Pilgrims, but in many accounts of the matter we find it recorded that in 1635 John Blackstone received £35 for the relinquishment of his “right.”

The foundation of Boston was succeeded by that of many other now famous towns of Massachusetts, and, ten years after the arrival of Conant at Salem, 21,000 emigrants are said to have settled in New England, one and all being Puritans, most of whom had been driven from their homes in their native land by the intolerance of the Government. Among those Puritans, however, were many who were unable to conform to the rigid practices or subscribe to the stern tenets of the Massachusetts churches, and to this fact was due the foundation of the first settlement in the neighboring state of Rhode Island. In 1631, a certain “godly minister,” named Roger Williams, arrived at Boston with his wife, Mary, and, finding the congregation there not entirely to his taste, he repaired to the older community of Salem, and for some little time acted there as assistant preacher, winning much love from the people by his earnest zeal and loving sympathy, but shortly becoming involved in serious trouble with the elders of the church on account of his heretical opinions.

Banished to Plymouth, and there but coldly received, Williams employed his exile in learning the Indian dialects, and printing a work on them which created great astonishment in England. In 1634 he returned to Salem, where he was eagerly received by his people, but was soon again compelled to flee, for questioning the right of the settlers to take the lands of the Indians without purchase. Our old acquaintance, Winthrop, now Governor of Massachusetts, who appears to have had a private leaning toward the enthusiastic young reformer, gave him a hint that he would do well to go to Narragansett Bay in the South, that being without the jurisdiction of any English Company, while it was within reach of the Indians, whose love he had won by his championship of their cause. To the Bay, therefore, though it was now mid-winter, Roger directed his course, and, early in 1636, he found a refuge with the chief, Massasoit, whose life had been saved by the English nine years before, and who now gave his white brother some land on the Seekonk River, east of the modern Providence, where in the early spring the lonely hero built himself a home. He was soon joined by a few friends from Salem; and, having received a kindly hint from Governor [♦]Winthrop of Plymouth, that he would be less likely to be interfered with on the other side of the river, the site of his house being within the original grant to the Pilgrim Fathers, he removed with his companions to the Indian village of Mooshausick, to which he gave the name of Providence, in “gratitude to God’s merciful providence to him in his distress, and also because he hoped his new home might be a shelter for those distressed in conscience.”