New England's First Fruits was a book published in London in 1643 about the early evangelization efforts by the Puritans in colonial New England in defense of criticisms from England that little evangelism was being pursued in New England. [1] [2] It was the first publication to mention Harvard College. [3]
The book describes various evangelization efforts and results, including the conversion experience of Wequash Cooke (d.1642) as allegedly the first Native American conversion to Protestant Christianity in New England. [4] The book also describes the conversion of Dorcas ye blackmore, an early African slave to Israel Stoughton, who joined the First Parish Church of Dorchester in 1641 and evangelized her fellow Native American servants and eventually attempted to gained her freedom with the help of the local church. [5] [6] [7]
Roger Williams' A Key Into the Language of America was written partially to contradict the book's claims about successful evangelization in New England, particularly the alleged conversion of Wequash. [8]
Roger Williams was an English-born New England Puritan minister, theologian, and author who founded Providence Plantations, which became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and later the State of Rhode Island. He was a staunch advocate for religious freedom, separation of church and state, and fair dealings with the Native Americans.
John Winthrop was an English Puritan lawyer and a leading figure in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England following Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led the first large wave of colonists from England in 1630 and served as governor for 12 of the colony's first 20 years. His writings and vision of the colony as a Puritan "city upon a hill" dominated New England colonial development, influencing the governments and religions of neighboring colonies in addition to those of Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628–1691), more formally the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, was an English settlement on the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay, one of the several colonies later reorganized as the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The lands of the settlement were in southern New England, with initial settlements on two natural harbors and surrounding land about 15.4 miles (24.8 km) apart—the areas around Salem and Boston, north of the previously established Plymouth Colony. The territory nominally administered by the Massachusetts Bay Colony covered much of central New England, including portions of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut.
John Eliot was a Puritan missionary to the American Indians who some called "the apostle to the Indians" and the founder of Roxbury Latin School in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1645. In 1660 he completed the enormous task of translating the Eliot Indian Bible into the Massachusett Indian language, producing more than two thousand completed copies.
Thomas Dudley was a New England colonial magistrate who served several terms as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Dudley was the chief founder of Newtowne, later Cambridge, Massachusetts, and built the town's first home. He provided land and funds to establish the Roxbury Latin School and signed Harvard College's new charter during his 1650 term as governor. Dudley was a devout Puritan who opposed religious views not conforming with his. In this, he was more rigid than other early Massachusetts leaders like John Winthrop, but less confrontational than John Endecott.
Nathaniel Eaton was an Anglican clergyman who was the first Headmaster of Harvard, President designate, and builder of Harvard's first College, Yard, and Library, in 1636.
Richard Mather was a New England Puritan minister in colonial Boston. He was father to Increase Mather and grandfather to Cotton Mather, both celebrated Boston theologians.
King's Chapel Burying Ground is a historic graveyard on Tremont Street, near its intersection with School Street, in Boston, Massachusetts. Established in 1630, it is the oldest graveyard in the city and is a site on the Freedom Trail. Despite its name, the graveyard pre-dates the adjacent King's Chapel ; it is not affiliated with that or any other church.
First Parish Dorchester is a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Dorchester, Massachusetts. It was founded by English Puritans who initially saw themselves as reformers rather than separatists, but increasingly intolerable conditions in England and at the urging of Reverend John White of Dorchester, Dorset, they emigrated to New England. On March 20, 1630 as they set sail from Plymouth, England on the Mary and John, the congregation wrote its founding church covenant. Nearly all of the 140 ship passengers originated in the West Country counties of Somerset, Dorset and Devon. In late May, the ship landed first at what became called Hull, Massachusetts, and then in June at a place called "Mattapan" by the indigenous people including the Massachusett and Wampanoag. The Puritans named their new home "Dorchester Plantation."
Nanepashemet was a sachem and bashabe or great leader of the Pawtucket Confederation of Abenaki peoples in present-day New England before the landing of the Pilgrims. He was a leader of Native peoples over a large part of what is now coastal Northeastern Massachusetts.
First Church in Boston is a Unitarian Universalist Church founded in 1630 by John Winthrop's original Puritan settlement in Boston, Massachusetts. The current building, located on 66 Marlborough Street in the Back Bay neighborhood, was designed by Paul Rudolph in a modernist style after a fire in 1968. It incorporates part of the earlier gothic revival building designed by William Robert Ware and Henry Van Brunt in 1867. The church has long been associated with Harvard University.
William Phelps, was a Puritan who emigrated from Crewkerne, England in 1630, one of the founders of both Dorchester, Boston Massachusetts and Windsor, Connecticut, and one of eight selected to lead the first democratic town government in the American colonies in 1637. He was foreman of the first grand jury in New England, served most of his life in early colonial government, and according to noted historian Henry Reed Stiles, Phelps "was one of the most prominent and highly respected men in the colony."
John White was an English clergyman, the rector of a parish in Dorchester, Dorset. He was instrumental in obtaining charters for the New England Company and the Massachusetts Bay Company. He took a personal interest in the settlement of New England.
A Key into the Language of America or An help to the Language of the Natives in that part of America called New England is a book written by Roger Williams in 1643 describing the Native American languages in New England in the 17th century, largely Narragansett, an Algonquian language. The book is the first published colonial study of a Native American language in English.
Wequash Cooke was allegedly one of the earliest Native American converts to Protestant Christianity, and as a sagamore he played an important role in the 1637 Pequot War in New England.
Israel Stoughton was an early English colonist in Massachusetts and a colonial commander in the Pequot War. Returning to England, he served as Parliamentarian officer in the First English Civil War.
Mary and John was a 400-ton ship that is known to have sailed between England and the American colonies four times from 1607 to 1634. Named in tribute to John and Mary Winthrop she was captained by Robert Davies and owned by Roger Ludlow (1590–1664), one of the assistants of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The ship's first two voyages to North America were to what is now Maine in June 1607 and September 1608, transporting emigrants to the colonies and back to England. In 1609, Samuel Argall also used the ship to navigate a shorter route to the Colony of Virginia via Bermuda. The third voyage to Maine was on March 20, 1630, bearing 130 colonists, and the fourth on March 26, 1634, to Nantaskut in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
George Phillips was an English-born Puritan minister who led, along with Richard Saltonstall, a group of English settlers up the Charles River to settle in what is now Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1630.
Dorcas ye blackmore was one of the first named African Americans to settle in New England. In 1641, she became the first known African American admitted to the local Puritan congregation.
John Smith was a founding settler of Providence in what would become the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Smith joined Roger Williams at the Seekonk River in 1636 after both were expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony. In the spring they crossed the river to found Providence where Smith later built and operated the town's gristmill.