Massachusetts Trails to the past is
requesting donations of any genealogy material that you
may have such as old obituaries, death information or
marriages, news clippings, births, and wills. If
you have any of this information, and would like to
donate it please email it to
Marie Miller
, State Administrator for
Massachusetts. Please include the source of your
information, if at all possible.
Massachusetts was originally
inhabited by tribes of the Algonquian language family
such as the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Pocomtuc,
Mahican, and Massachusett. While cultivation of crops
like squash and corn supplemented their diets, these
tribes were generally dependent on hunting, gathering
and fishing for most of their food supply. Villages
consisted of lodges called wigwams as well as long
houses, and tribes were led by male or female elders
known as sachems. The first English settlers in
Massachusetts, the Pilgrims, established their
settlement at Plymouth in 1620, and developed friendly
relations with the native Wampanoag. This was the second
successful permanent English colony in North America,
after the Jamestown Colony. The Pilgrims were soon
followed by other Puritans, who established the
Massachusetts Bay Colony at present-day Boston in
1630. In
1641, Massachusetts expanded inland significantly,
acquiring the Connecticut River Valley settlement of
Springfield, which had recently disputed with, and
defected from its original administrators, the
Connecticut Colony. This established Massachusetts'
southern border in the west. Massachusetts was a center of
the movement for independence from Great Britain;
colonists here had long had uneasy relations with the
British monarchy, including open rebellion under the
Dominion of New England in the 1680s. Protests against
British attempts to tax the colonies after the French
and Indian War ended in 1763 led to the Boston Massacre
in 1770, and the 1773 Boston Tea Party escalated
tensions to the breaking point. Anti-Parliamentary
activity by men such as Samuel Adams and John Hancock,
followed by reprisals by the British government, were a
primary reason for the unity of the Thirteen Colonies
and the outbreak of the American Revolution. The Battles of Lexington and
Concord initiated the American Revolutionary War and
were fought in the homonymous Massachusetts towns.
Future President George Washington took over what would
become the Continental Army after the battle. His first
victory was the Siege of Boston in
the winter of 1775
-76, after which the British were forced to evacuate
the city. The event is still celebrated in Suffolk
County as Evacuation Day.
One of three original counties created
in the Plymouth Colony
For its original county seat of
Bristol, Massachusetts, which is named for the English port city of
Bristol - when the Town of Bristol joined Rhode Island, the name of the
county was kept
From parts of Hampshire County,
Middlesex County and Suffolk County. Government abolished in 1998.
For its county seat of Worcester,
which is named in honor of the English city of Worcester and the English
Civil War Battle of Worcester in 1651, a Parliamentarian
victory
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