Boston, the largest city in New England, is located on a hilly peninsula in Massachusetts Bay. The region had been inhabited since at least 2400 B.C. by the Massachusetts tribe of Native Americans, who called the peninsula Shawmut.
Captain John Smith in 1614 explored the coastline of what he christened “New England” (to make the area sound more attractive to settlers). Within a few years, more than half the Native Americans in the region had died of smallpox introduced by European explorers.
A fleet of ships helmed by Puritans left England in 1630, settling in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Led by John Winthrop, the group soon merged with the Pilgrims’ Plymouth Colony, located about 40 miles to the south in Cape Cod Bay.
Originally called Tremontaine for the three hills in the area, the Puritans later changed the settlement’s name to Boston, after the town in Lincolnshire, England, from which many Puritans originated. In the 1630s, Boston Latin School—where Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock and Samuel Adams studied—and Harvard University were founded.
Despite the premium placed on education and religion, Boston’s Puritans weren’t keen on tolerance: The “crime” of being a Quaker was punishable by imprisonment or death, celebrating Christmas was banned, and in 1643 the city welcomed the first slave ship into Boston Harbor.
As Boston grew and prospered, tensions between colonists and English governors increased, especially after the British Parliament passed the Molasses Act of 1733, which levied a tax on molasses, a critical import for Boston rum makers. Soon, the city’s politicians and clergymen were crying out for, “No taxation without representation!”
After the 1770 Boston Massacre, during which British troops fired upon a mob of colonists, killing five, anti-British sentiment reached a fever pitch. When the 1773 Tea Act levied taxes on imported tea, the Sons of Liberty staged the Boston Tea Party, dumping some 45 tons of tea into Boston Harbor.
