New England Colonies

New England: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut

The colonists who came to New England didn't have a clue about farming. These guys were small townsfolk who worked with their hands. The leaders of New England were selective in who they let into their community. People with skills such as blacksmiths, shipwrights and carpenters were welcome. So too were the intellectual set such as preachers, lawyers, and doctors. New England was planned to be a family place.

Small towns where hard work meant building a comfortable life for you and your family. A community of like-minded individuals who were free to persecute anyone who didn't think like they did. In other words, just one happy Puritan community.

New Englanders tended to arrive in packs. Most of them having known one another back home. Your typical New England colony was organized around a town center: The Meeting House, the village green, and the tavern. The Meeting House was the center of Puritan life, doubling as a courthouse, town council, church, and community center. This was where the Puritans gathered to worship every Sunday, this is where criminals were brought to justice, and where the town leaders made laws and dealt with boring everyday issues like who’s cow ran amok in whose field, or whose husband slept with another man’s wife. In 1692 it was in the Meeting House where nineteen witches were sentenced to death in Salem, Massachusetts.

Like back home, the town village was organized along a main dirt road that widened once you got to the town center. Here lay the village green, where the militia trained (translation: the men of the town now had an excuse to get together once a month, get drunk, fire their guns, and march around the town playing soldier) and the people brought their sheep and cows to graze. All of these activity made the village green anything but grassy. Most “greens” were little more than muddy paddocks with a few sprigs of grass that had gotten lucky. And of course, despite the Puritan’s reputation for being religious sticks-in-the-mud, every New England town made sure to build a tavern: a sort of cafe, motel, ale house type of establishment.

85% of colonials made their living by subsistence farming. Even if most colonists came over knowing next to nothing about farming or building houses, they were forced to catch on fast. Depending on what part of Old England you hailed from, New England farms were either worked by the entire community--communist style-- or by individual families. Once you got out of town, which wasn’t more than a short walk, you reached the fields. Here, using the fish-in-the-hole techniques first introduced to the Pilgrims by Squanto, the New Englanders grew corn, barley, peas, pumpkins, and bunch of other vegetables that were overcooked and turned into a nutritionally-empty mush that every Englishman liked to call supper. The English were carnivores at heart, preferring to their steak and kidney (animal not bean) pies to a steaming plate of broccoli. This, along with the amount of sugar that the colonists ate (which is still far less than us 21st Century folks) explains the bad teeth that colonists were famous for.

The Inside of a Puritan Meeting Hall (which also doubled as church and courthouse)

In 1642, Massachusetts passed a law requiring parents to educate their children in reading and in matters of religion. Education was very important to the people of New England; all towns with more than 50 people had to hire a school teacher. Puritans believed that everyone should be literate to be able to read the Bible for themselves. The earliest colleges in America, like Harvard and Princeton, came from this time and place.

Back in England, not being a member of the Anglican Church could get you tossed into the brink, but in New England being outside of the congregation translated to your not being a true member of society. Everyone had to pay their taxes, but being a Church member gave you the right to vote and receive the sacraments. The Puritans were so suspicious of strangers that they refused to allow their members to sell their homes to anyone who had not been approved by the community. The New England towns were dead serious about keeping out the riff raff that seemed to be making havoc down in Virginia. But often, it didn’t work. The misfits simply moved deeper into the woods where they could live their lives free from Puritan control. And for those who just couldn’t get with the program, the Puritans wouldn’t think twice about banishing you to some remote corner of New England. That’s how Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire got their start.

Puritan towns were tight knit and suspicious of strangers. They came seeking religious freedom but they didn’t tolerate even an ounce of dissent. Puritan or Non-Puritan, you were expected to tow the Puritan line. The New England community revolved around the church. Unlike those "heathen" Virginians who were mainly Anglicans, the Puritans were rebels for Christ who had made their stand against the Anglican Church as soon as their feet touched the deck of the Mayflower.

At first, the Puritans tried to purify the Anglican Church of its Catholic ways. But when they didn’t win that battle, they simply--and illegally-- started their own church, who came to be known as Congregationalists. To the Puritans, the congregation of church members was where God could be found. God was where the prayer was. But they wouldn’t let just anyone in their midst. You had to prove that you were worthy. Church membership was a valued prize and applicants had to prove to the Congregation that “god dwelt in them”.

Made of rough logs and mud coating, the early colonial churches looked nothing like the white buildings with picturesque steeples that we see today. Men and women sat separately on hard benches. Native Americans and Africans sat up in the loft with no benches. Services on Sunday could last for five hours, sometimes more. If you were caught talking you got rapped on the head with a stick. Don't even think about sneaking out, the doors were closed and closely watched.

Up until the Mid-1700's Church and State were definitely not separate. Puritan beliefs about how people should behave created a whole slew of laws that we might find ridiculous today. For example: those who skipped church services could be fined or spend a day in the stocks. Even though people didn't have watches or clocks, sleeping in wasn't an excuse. Important events were always announced by the ringing of the church bells.

Except for attending church, The Puritan leaders of New England made it a crime to celebrate Christmas.

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