Mapping & Monitoring
Early History of Southeastern Massachusetts
1620 to 1800
First landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. Published in New York by Martin & Johnson in 1859. Plate drawn by Charles Lucy and engraved by T. Phillibrown.
The history of southeastern Massachusetts is the history of Massachusetts itself. As every schoolchild in the United States knows, among the first Europeans to settle in New England arrived in Plymouth in 1620 to be met by wary but helpful Native Americans. They chose an abandoned Indian village that had good water. The Pilgrims, completely unschooled in agriculture, arrived in November and many died the first winter. More information on this period may be found at Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The effect upon the lands of Southeastern Massachusetts by these early European settlers was small because there were very few settlers at first. Some 20,000 immigrants came during the period of 1630 to 1642 during what was called the “Great Migration” to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Fifty years after the Pilgrims landed, the population of Massachusetts was estimated to be only 35,000. Also, colonists depended upon the sea and commerce as much as upon the land for food and supplies. Grazing animals were limited to a few per family as there was little market for any surplus production. Expansion to the interior was limited by fear of the indigenous peoples.
In 1675, the “preventative” King Phillip’s War was launched by the British who feared that the Wampanoag sachem (chief), Metacom (dubbed King Phillip by the colonists) would create a military Indian alliance of several tribes. The war caused enough disruption and displacement of the Native Americans of Massachusetts that they were no longer important in English public policy, allowing the settlement of the interior of Southeastern Massachusetts to proceed unchecked.
The early European population of the interior of the region was focused primarily on subsistence farming. Little was exported except for timber, fish, and furs, gained in part from trade with the remaining Native Americans. The population of the two primary counties of the region, Bristol and Plymouth, was only about 20,000 each in 1765. Barnstable County (Cape Cod), smaller and with soils already approaching exhaustion from a longer period of occupation, had a population of only 12,000. Modest population increases occurred in the region up to 1830 with Bristol and Plymouth Counties each having about 40,000 inhabitants while Barnstable County increased to 28,000. Early industrial beginnings, through the production of bog iron ore for nails, spades and other tools ore, occurred in Taunton, Plymouth, Middleboro, and Bridgewater.
The Pilgrims had chosen Plymouth in part because of the likelihood of developing a profitable trade in Atlantic Cod. For the next two centuries Cod remained highly important in the region with early ships sailing out of Cohasset, Scituate, Duxbury, Kingston, Plymouth and Yarmouth. The beginnings of the whaling industry started in the mid to late 1700s with the largest fleets from Nantucket and other fleets, in order of size, from Dartmouth, Martha’s Vineyard, Falmouth, and Swansea.
