12th Great Grandfather of Sarah Elizabeth Rose

1) Born in Edwardstone, near Groton, Suffolk, England.

2) Of a landowning family, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge,

came into family fortune, and became a government administrator

with strong Puritan leanings.

3) Occupation: A Puritan lawyer, and founder of the Massachusetts

Bay Colony, and its first Governor.

4) Winthrop, along with Thomas Dudley, founded the town of Boston.

He led the group that arranged for the removal of the company's

government to New England.

5) He was chosen in 1629 to be governor of the proposed colony.

He arrived in 1630, in the ship Arbella at Salem and shortly

founded on Shawmut peninsula the settlement that became

Boston.

6) He was—with the possible exception of John Cotton —the

most distinguished citizen of Massachusetts Bay colony,

elected 12 times to serve as governor. He helped to

shape the theocratic policy of the colony and opposed

broad democracy.

7) It was while he was deputy governor and Sir Henry

Vane (1631-62) was governor, that Winthrop bitterly and

successfully opposed the antinomian beliefs of Anne

Hutchinson and her followers, who were supported by

Vane.

8) The force of his influence on the history of Massachusetts

was enormous. Winthrop's journal, which was edited

by J. K. Hosmer and published in 1908 as The

History of New England from 1630 to 1649 is one

of the most valuable of American historical sources.

9) In 1628 a group of Puritans, led by John Winthrop and

Thomas Dudley, persuaded King James to grant them

an area of land between the Massachusetts Bay and

Charles River in North America. That year the g roup

sent John Endecott to begin a plantation in Salem.

10) The main party of 700 people left Southampton in

April 1630. The party included John Winthrop, Thomas

Dudley, William Pynchon, Simon Bradstreet and Anne

Bradstreet. Before they left John Cotton gave a

sermon where he emphasized the parallel between the

Puritans and God's chosen people, claiming it was

God's will that they should inhabit all the world.

During the 1630s over 20,000 people emigrated

to Massachusetts.

11) Winthrop was elected Governor before the

colony set out from England in 1629,

and would continue to govern for

fifteen of the colony's first twenty years.

His goal, to erect a pious Puritan state, is

expressed in his "City on a Hill" speech.

Puritan theocracy could be harsh and

forbidding, such as when he exiled

Anne Hutchinson and others for their

unorthodox views. He ably defended

the colony's charter in a letter to the

Lords Commissioners of Plantations

(1638) and was elected President

of the Confederation for the United

Colonies in 1643.

he called the place Shawmut as its Algonquin

natives did. the Rev. William Blackstone

(aka Blaxton) was an Anglican minister who

had come to the area with the failed Robert

Georges colony in 1623.

13) In July of 1630, Governor John Winthrop

and the Massachusetts Bay Colony settlers

arrived in Salem, then traveled down to

Charlestown – then called Mishawum.

Mishawum had no pure water, while Shawmut

had beautiful springs. Rev. Blackstone invited

the colonists to Shawmut, and on September

7th 1630 the Puritan's resolved that they would

settle on the peninsula. Blackstone soon tired of

Puritan intolerance, and moved about 35 miles

south of Boston, to a hill overlooking a wide bend

in what the Indians then called the Pautucket

River and what is today known as the

Blackstone River.

14) In 1636, when Sir Harry Vane was chosen Governor,

Winthrop was deputy, and he led the opposition to Vane

in theAnne Hutchinson controversy, on which issue he

was elected over Vane in 1637. He was an earnest

opponent of the new Antinomian doctrines, and was active

in the banishment of Mrs. Hutchinson and her followers.

the seat of the General Court and the legislature.

Thomas Dudley was appointed his deputy and

on four occasions (1634, 1640, 1645 and 1650)

he served as governor.

16) Massachusetts was virtually independent

of the Britain. Its government was representative,

although the franchise was restricted to church

members. Non-Puritans were allowed to

reside in the colony but were forbidden

participation in the government

17) Thomas Dudley and John Winthrop did

not always agree about the way the colony should

be ruled. Whereas Winthrop was tolerant and

liberal, Dudley favoured the expulsion of any

person he considered to be a heretic. 18) It was

Dudley who managed to get Anne Hutchinson and

her followers removed from the colony. A crisis

meeting was held in 1635 and these conflicts

were resolved. Two years later Winthrop

published a new policy on heresy. See The

Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649

(1996), abridged ed. by R. S. Dunn and L.

Yeandle; R. C. Winthrop, Life and Letters

of John Winthrop (2 vol., 1864–67;

repr. 1971); Winthrop Papers (5 vol.,

1929–47); biographies by J. H. Twichell

(1892), E. S. Morgan (1958), G. R.

Raymer (1963), and F. J. Bremer (2003);

R. S. Dunn, Puritans and Yankees

(1962, repr. 1971).

18)John Winthrop and the Puritans who

followed him across the Atlantic in 1630 were

not the first English colonists in Massachusetts.

In 1626 a small group of Englishmen had

abandoned a short-lived settlement on

Cape Ann and moved south to an area

they called Naumkeag, after the Native

American people who had farmed there.

"Salem," which means peaceful in Hebrew.

They chose John Endecott governor of the new

settlement, which was formed to provide a

place where those who did not conform to

Church of England doctrine could worship

in peace. (Unlike the Pilgrims in Plymouth

Colony, who chose to separate from the

Church of England, the Puritans wished to

remain within its fold.) The following year,

a charter from Charles I made it official that,

as far as the King of England was concerned,

"the Governor and Company of Massachusetts

Bay in New England" had rights to a large

area of land stretching from three miles south

of the Charles River to three miles north of the

Merrimack. Under this charter, the Massachusetts

Bay Colony enjoyed a remarkable degree of

independence; the governor was to be "chosen

out of the freemen of the saide Company,"

rather than appointed in England under the

watchful eye of the king. Hoping to secure these

advantages, Puritans in England bought control

of the company and selected 41-year-old John

Winthrop to replace Endecott as governor.

20) The son of a well-respected lawyer, John Winthrop

had attended Trinity College Cambridge for two years.

He at one time seriously considered becoming a

minister but established a lucrative law practice instead.

He remained deeply religious, and like other English

Puritans, desired to reform the Church of England.

When he concluded that reform was not possible,

he chose to make the long journey to the New World.

By early 1630, a fleet of 12 ships was ready to take

roughly 1,000 people to New England. The largest

vessel, the 350-ton Arabella, carried passengers,

many heads of cattle, and provisions. Bad weather

delayed the ship's departure several times; after

several false starts, on April 10, 1630 the Arabella

sailed into the open waters of the Atlantic.

21) Life in early Boston was brutal. In a September

letter to his wife, Winthrop wrote of "much mortality,

sickness, and trouble." Before the first year was out,

200 of the settlers had died. Yet Winthop never gave

up hope, "putting his hand to any ordinary labor,"

and trusting in God. He served as governor of the

struggling colony for more than a decade and

was active in government until his death in 1649,

almost exactly 19 years to the day after his ship sailed

out of English waters. It is not known exactly where

or when John Winthrop delivered his famous "Model

of Christian Charity" speech, but the intended audience

was clearly his fellow emigrants. "It is by mutual

consent [that we] seek out a place of cohabitation and

consortship under a due form of government both civil

and ecclesiastical. In such cases as this, the care of the

public must oversway all private respects. . . . "he told

them. We go "to improve our lives, to do more service

to the Lord. . . . We have entered a covenant with [God]

for this work." He continued: "For we must consider that

we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people

are upon us."

22)Winthrop's ship reached Salem on June 12th;

two days later, the passengers stepped ashore as the

ship's captain fired a five-gun salute. The rest of the

fleet arrived in the next few weeks. It was the

beginning of what became known as the Great

Migration (1630–1642), during which thousands

of English families immigrated to Massachusetts.

23) After only a few weeks in Salem, Winthrop

and his followers moved to the north side of the

Charles River to what they called Charles Town.

However, because of the scarcity of fresh water

there, in September they crossed the river again,

this time establishing a new town, which they

named Boston. The Massachusetts Bay Charter

remained in place until Charles II revoked it in

1684. In 1691, a new charter folded Plymouth

Colony into a royal colony — the Province of

Massachusetts — with a governor appointed by

the Crown.