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Samuel W. Duffield

Landing of Governor Winthrop at Salem.

A MONG the names of the pioneers in the settlement of this Western world, pre-eminently stands that of John Winthrop, the first Governor of the colony of Massachusetts Bay. Previous to the emigration to America under Governor Winthrop, attempts had been made to settle the country about the Massachusetts Bay, but which succeeded to a very limited extent. The emigrants were comparatively few in numbers, and were intended more for the advantage of the fisheries and the fur trade than for the purposes of permanent settlement. And most of them had either returned to England, or perished through the hardships encountered, or from disease incident to the climate of a wild, uncultivated region; and a small number of Colonists at Salem, and here and there an isolated family, without any effective organization, were all that remained of them. But in 1630, the Massachusetts Bay Company, under the direction of John Winthrop, obtained from Charles I, a confirmation of their patent previously obtained from the Council of Plymouth, granting them all the territory extending in length from three miles north of the Merrimac River to three miles south of Charles River, and in breadth from the Atlantic to the South-lived in a cottage near the western extremity of the ern Ocean.

Preparations were immediately made for the transportation to this new world of a body of emigrants, whose numbers, determined character, and moral and intellectual worth, should insure the permanent settlement of the colony. The success of their efforts was commensurate with their design.