Massachusetts was a site of early English colonization. The Plymouth Colony was founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims of Mayflower. In 1630, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, taking its name from the Indigenous Massachusett people, also established settlements in Boston and Salem. In 1692, the town of Salem and surrounding areas experienced one of America's most infamous cases of mass hysteria, the Salem witch trials.
The American Revolution originated in Massachusetts, with Boston becoming known as the "Cradle of Liberty" for its political agitation. In 1786, Shays' Rebellion, a populist revolt, influenced the United States Constitutional Convention. Originally dependent on agriculture, fishing, and trade, Massachusetts transformed into a manufacturing hub during the Industrial Revolution.
Before the American Civil War, the state was a center for the abolitionist, temperance, and transcendentalist movements. During the 20th century, the state's economy shifted from manufacturing to services; in the 21st century, Massachusetts has become the global leader in biotechnology, and also excels in artificial intelligence, engineering, higher education, finance, and maritime trade.
Boston is Massachusetts' capital and most populous city, as well as its cultural and financial center; other major cities are Worcester, Springfield, and Cambridge. The state also hosts the urban core of Greater Boston, the largest metropolitan area in New England, with profound influence on U.S. history, academia, and the research economy.
Massachusetts has a reputation for social and political progressivism; it is the only U.S. state with a right to shelter law, and was the first U.S. stateโand one of the earliest jurisdictions in the worldโto legally recognize same-sex marriage. Harvard University in Cambridge is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, with the largest financial endowment of any university in the world.
Both Harvard and MIT, also in Cambridge, are perennially ranked as either the most or among the most highly regarded academic institutions in the world.
Massachusetts is the most educated U.S. state, ranking first by the percentage of population 25 and over with either a bachelor's degree or advanced degree. Its public school system ranks first in the country, with public school students placing among the top tier in the world in academic performance. Massachusetts is among the wealthiest and most developed states, and has been credited with the best-performing economy.
Massachusetts ranks first in innovation among all U.S. states; first on the American Human Development and United Nations Human Development indexes; first in per capita income; and first in median income, both by household and individually. Massachusetts has the highest health insurance coverage rate of any U.S. state, with approximately 98% of residents insured.
Overall, Massachusetts often ranks as the U.S. state with the highest quality of life. However, Massachusetts has faced increasing affordability issues in the 2020s, with the state ranking highly in income inequality and cost of living compared to other states. Housing in Massachusetts is among the most expensive in the country.
These affordability pressures have helped drive one of the highest rates of domestic out-migration in the country, as residents increasingly leave Massachusetts for less expensive places to live.
Etymology
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was named after the Indigenous population, the Massachusett or Muhsachuweesut, whose name likely derived from the Wรดpanรขak word muswachasut, segmented as mus(รขy) "big" + wach "mountain" + -s "diminutive" + -ut "locative". This word has been translated as "near the great hill", "by the blue hills", "at the little big hill", or "at the range of hills", in reference to the Blue Hillsโnamely, the Great Blue Hill, located on the boundary of Milton and Canton. Massachusett has also been represented as Moswetuset.
This comes from the name of the Moswetuset Hummock (meaning "hill shaped like an arrowhead") in Quincy, where Plymouth Colony commander Myles Standish (a hired English military officer) and Squanto (a member of the Patuxet band of the Wamponoag people, who have since died off due to contagious diseases brought by colonists) met Chief Chickatawbut in 1621.
Although the designation "Commonwealth" forms part of the state's official name, it has no practical implications in modern times, and Massachusetts has the same position and powers within the United States as other states. John Adams may have chosen the word in 1779 for the second draft of what became the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution; unlike the word "state", the word "commonwealth" had the connotation of a republic at the time.
This was in contrast to the monarchy the former colonies were fighting against during the American Revolutionary War. The name "State of Massachusetts Bay" appeared in the first draft, which was ultimately rejected. It was also chosen to include the "Cape Islands" in reference to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucketโfrom 1780 to 1844, they were seen as additional and separate entities confined within the Commonwealth.
History
Pre-colonization
Massachusetts was originally inhabited by tribes of the Algonquian language family, including the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Pocomtuc, Mahican, and Massachusett. While cultivation of crops like squash and corn were an important part of their diet, the people of these tribes hunted, fished, and searched the forest for most of their food.
Villagers lived in lodges called wigwams as well as longhouses. Tribes were led by male or female elders known as sachems.
Colonial period
During the early 1600s, European colonists caused virgin soil epidemics such as smallpox, measles, influenza, and perhaps leptospirosis in what is now known as the northeastern region of the United States. Between 1617 and 1619, a disease that was most likely smallpox killed approximately 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans.
The first English colonists in Massachusetts Bay Colony landed with Richard Vines and spent the winter in Biddeford Pool near Cape Porpoise (after 1820 the State of Maine) in 1616. The Puritans arrived at Plymouth in 1620. This was the second permanent English colony in the part of North America that later became the United States, after the Jamestown Colony.
The "First Thanksgiving" was celebrated by the Puritans after their first harvest in the "New World" and lasted for three days. They were soon followed by other Puritans, who colonized the Massachusetts Bay Colonyโnow known as Bostonโin 1630.
The Puritans believed the Church of England needed to be further reformed along Protestant Calvinist lines, and experienced harassment due to the religious policies of King Charles I and high-ranking clergy such as William Laud, who would become Charles's Archbishop of Canterbury, whom they feared were re-introducing "Romish" elements to the national church.
They decided to colonize to Massachusetts, intending to establish what they considered an "ideal" religious society. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was colonized under a royal charter, unlike the Plymouth colony, in 1629. Both religious dissent and expansionism resulted in several new colonies being founded, shortly after Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, elsewhere in New England.
The Massachusetts Bay banished dissenters such as Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams due to religious and political conflict. In 1636, Williams colonized what is now known as Rhode Island, and Hutchinson joined him there several years later. Religious intolerance continued, and among those who objected to this later that century were the English Quaker preachers Alice and Thomas Curwen, who were publicly flogged and imprisoned in Boston in 1676.
By 1641, Massachusetts had expanded inland significantly. The Commonwealth acquired the Connecticut River Valley settlement of Springfield, which had recently experienced disputes withโand defected fromโits original administrators, the Connecticut Colony. This established Massachusetts's southern border in the west. However, this became disputed territory until 1803โ04 due to surveying problems, leading to the modern Southwick Jog.
In 1652 the Massachusetts General Court authorized Boston silversmith John Hull to produce local coinage in shilling, sixpence and threepence denominations to address a coin shortage in the colony. Prior to Hull's local coinage production, the colony's economy remained dependent on barter and foreign currency, including English, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and counterfeit coins.
In 1661, shortly after the restoration of the British monarchy, the British government considered the Boston mint to be treasonous. However, the colony ignored the English demands to cease operations until at least 1682, when Hull's contract as mintmaster expired, and the colony did not move to renew his contract or appoint a new mintmaster. The coinage was a contributing factor to the revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter in 1684.
Tensions with the Native Americans resulted in King Philip's War from 1675 to 1678. The Native Americans, led by Metacom or King Philip, attacked half the towns in Massachusetts and destroyed many of them. During King William's War and Queen Anne's War, Massachusetts and the other New England colonies engaged in expeditionary campaigns in Quebec and Acadia.
In 1691, the English Crown issued a new charter uniting the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouthโalong with the territory of Maineโinto the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Shortly after, the new province's first governor, William Phips, arrived. The Salem witch trials also took place, where a number of men and women were hanged for alleged witchcraft.
The most destructive earthquake known to date in New England occurred on November 18, 1755, causing considerable damage across Massachusetts.
Revolutionary War
Massachusetts was a center of the movement for independence from Great Britain. Colonists in Massachusetts had long had uneasy relations with the British monarchy, including open rebellion under the Dominion of New England in the 1680s. Protests against British attempts to tax the colonies after the French and Indian War ended in 1763 led to the Boston Massacre in 1770, and the 1773 Boston Tea Party escalated tensions.
In 1774, the Intolerable Acts targeted Massachusetts with punishments for the Boston Tea Party and further decreased local autonomy, increasing local dissent. Anti-Parliamentary activity by men such as Samuel Adams and John Hancock, followed by reprisals by the British government, were a primary reason for the unity of the Thirteen Colonies and the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775.
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were fought in Massachusetts in 1775, and initiated the American Revolutionary War. George Washington, later the first president of the future country, took over what would become the Continental Army after the battle. His first victory was the siege of Boston in the winter of 1775โ76, after which the British were forced to evacuate the city. The event is still celebrated in Suffolk County only every March 17 as Evacuation Day.
On the coast, Salem became a center for privateering. Although the documentation is incomplete, about 1,700 letters of marque, issued on a per-voyage basis, were granted during the American Revolution. Nearly 800 vessels were commissioned as privateers, which were credited with capturing or destroying about 600 British ships.
Federal period
Bostonian John Adams, known as the "Atlas of Independence", was highly involved in both separation from Britain and the Constitution of Massachusetts, which effectively (the Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker cases as interpreted by William Cushing) made Massachusetts the first state to abolish slavery. David McCullough points out that an equally important feature was its placing for the first time the courts as a co-equal branch separate from the executive. (The Constitution of Vermont, adopted in 1777, represented the first partial ban on slavery among the states.
Vermont became a state in 1791 but did not fully ban slavery until 1858 with the Vermont Personal Liberty Law. The Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 made Pennsylvania the first state to abolish slavery by statute – the second English colony to do so; the first having been the Colony of Georgia in 1735.) Later, Adams was active in early American foreign affairs and succeeded Washington as the second president of the United States. His son, John Quincy Adams, also from Massachusetts, would go on to become the nation's sixth president.
From 1786 to 1787, an armed uprising led by Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays, now known as Shays' Rebellion, wrought havoc throughout Massachusetts and ultimately attempted to seize the federal Springfield Armory. The rebellion was one of the major factors in the decision to draft a stronger national constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation. On February 6, 1788, Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the United States Constitution.
19th century
In 1820, Maine separated from Massachusetts and entered the Union as the 23rd state due to the ratification of the Missouri Compromise.
During the 19th century, Massachusetts became a national leader in the American Industrial Revolution, with factories around cities such as Lowell and Boston producing textiles and shoes, and factories around Springfield producing tools, paper, and textiles. The state's economy transformed from one based primarily on agriculture to an industrial one, initially making use of water-power and later the steam engine to power factories.
Canals and railroads were being used in the state for transporting raw materials and finished goods. At first, the new industries drew labor from Yankees on nearby subsistence farms, though they later relied upon immigrant labor from Europe and Canada.
Although Massachusetts was one of the first English colonies to legally institutionalize slavery in the early seventeenth century, the state ultimately transformed into a vital epicenter of progressivist and abolitionist activity in the decades leading up to the American Civil War. Furthermore, as secretary of the state board of education, Horace Mann championed systemic reforms that established the Massachusetts public school system as a national model.
Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, both philosophers and writers from the state, also made major contributions to American philosophy. Furthermore, members of the transcendentalist movement within the state emphasized the importance of the natural world and emotion to humanity.