The Shawmut Peninsula, the promontory of land on which Boston, Massachusetts will one day be built, was originally connected to the mainland to its south by a narrow isthmus, Boston Neck, and surrounded by (using modern names) the waters of Boston Harbor and the Back Bay, an estuary of the Charles River.

Like much of the Massachusetts landscape, the peninsula was shaped by glacial erosion and deposits left by retreating glaciers at the end of the last ice age.

Several prehistoric Native American archaeological sites excavated in the city have shown that the peninsula was inhabited as early as 5000 BCE.

Here, anglers of the twenty-seventh century BCE construct an elaborate fish weir consisting of sixty-five thousand stakes interwoven with branches to trap their prey in tribal waters.

People at the site of present Boston, Massachusetts, construct an elaborate fish weir consisting of sixty-five thousand stakes interwoven with branches to trap their prey in tribal waters.

The city of Boston is founded on September 17, 1630, by a similar, larger group.

The colony will continue to grow, aided by the Great Migration.

The redirected Massachusetts Bay Company will over the ensuing decade transplant whole communities from Old England to New England, totaling around ten thousand emigrants.

Many ministers reacting to the newly repressive religious policies of England will made the trip with their flocks.

John Cotton, Roger Williams, Thomas Hooker, and others will become leaders of Puritan congregations in Massachusetts.

The colony's charter grants to the Massachusetts General Court the authority to elect officers and to make laws for the colony.

Its first meeting in America is held October 1630, but is attended by only eight freemen.

Soon after they create the First Church of Boston.

The freemen vote to grant all legislative, executive, and judicial power to a "Council" of the Governor's assistants (these same eight men).

They then set up town boundaries, create taxes, and elect officers.

To quell unrest caused by this limited franchise, the eight then add one hundred and eighteen settlers to the court as freemen, but power remains with the council.

The first murmurs against the system put in place by the "Council" of the Governor's assistants had arisen when a tax was imposed on the entire colony in 1632, but Governor Winthrop had been able to quiet fears.

The issue of governance arises again in 1634,  as deputies demand to see the charter that has been kept hidden from them.

They learn of the provisions that the general court should make all laws, and that all freemen should be members.

The group demands that the charter be enforced to the letter, but eventually reach a compromise with Winthrop.

They agree to a General Court made up of two delegates elected by each town, the Governor's council of advisors, and the Governor himself.

This Court is to have authority over "The raising up public stock" (taxes) and "what they should agree upon should bind all."

What Winthrop did not expect was that what they would "bind" themselves to include the election of the governor, and Thomas Dudley is elected.

The first revolution is complete: a trading company has become a representative democracy.

Boston Latin School, founded in Boston, Massachusetts on April 23, 1635, is modeled after Boston Grammar School in Lincolnshire, England, whence many of Boston's original settlers derive.

It admits only male students and hire only male teachers.

It is the first public school and, today, the oldest existing school in the United States.

The Boston area does not suffer from the tide as do areas just to its south.

The nearest surge sweeps over the low-lying tracts of Dorchester, ruining the farms and landscape (from accounts of William Bradford and John Winthrop).

The Reverend John Wheelwright had become vicar of Bilsby, England from 1623 to 1633.

A hiatus in the records of his English parish indicates that its pastor was absent during the years 1628 and 1629.

It may be inferred that he had come to New England with Endicott in September of the former year, and lived with associates in Massachusetts during the succeeding winter.

The conditions were favorable for Wheelwright, or any other congenial foreigner, to obtain a right of settlement within the limits of New Hampshire.

The principal result of Wheelwright’s activities at this time appears to have been the execution of a settlement treaty or option with the native sagamores of southern New Hampshire, to which John Oldham had been a witness.

This document will later be disputed as a forgery by many historians.

His second wife is Mary, daughter of Edward and Sussana Hutchinson of Alford, Lincolnshire, England; whom he had married in England about 1631 (Mary Hutchinson's sister Anne had in 1632 married Wheelwright's friend, the Reverend Ralph Levett, a fellow Cambridge graduate and protégé of John Cotton, who became the vicar of nearby Grainsby, Lincolnshire.)

While the Reverend Wheelwright is vicar at Bilsby in 1636 he is driven from his Anglican church for non-conformity.

With his second wife, her mother Sussana, and their five children and accompanied by Augustine Storer, brother of his first wife, Wheelwright sails for Boston, arriving on June 12, 1636.

Well received here, he becomes pastor of the Eaxe Chapel at Mount Wollaston, Boston, where he will remain for a few months.

Anne Hutchinson, born Anne Marbury in Alford, Lincolnshire, England, and baptized there on July 20, 1591, was the daughter of Francis Marbury, a dissident Puritan clergyman, and Bridget (Dryden) Marbury.

Anne was educated at home and read from her father's library.

Anne had married William (Will) Hutchinson at St. Mary Woolnoth, London on August 9, 1612 at the age of twenty-one.

She and her family had followed the sermons of John Cotton, a Protestant minister whose teachings echoed those of her father's.

Cotton had left England because of his persecution by the bishops.

Anne and her family had likewise emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1634, together with other colonists.

Extremely outspoken about some of her most controversial views, Anne Hutchinson is an avid student of the Bible, which she freely interprets in the light of what she terms her "divine inspiration."

She generally adheres to the principles of Puritan orthodoxy.

Notably, however, she holds enormously progressive, ahead-of-her-times notions about the equality and rights of women, in contradiction of both Puritan and prevailing cultural attitudes.

She is forthright and compelling in proclaiming these beliefs, which put her in considerable tension not only with the Massachusetts Bay Colony's government, who are accountable to the established Church of England (Anglicans), but also with other Puritans, especially the clergy.

She had begun conducting informal Bible studies and discussion groups in her home, something that gives scope to Puritan intellects.

Hutchinson invites her friends and neighbors, at first all of them women.

Participants felt free to question religious beliefs and to decry racial prejudice, including enslavement of Native Americans.

In particular, Hutchinson constantly challenges the standard interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve.

This is a vital text for the Puritans, key to the doctrine of original sin, but it is regularly cited to assign special blame to women as the source of sin and to justify the extremely patriarchal structure of Puritan society.

As word of her teachings spread, she attracts new followers, including many men.

Among them are men like Henry Vane, the Younger, who becomes the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 as a short-tenured successor to John Haynes.

Attendance at her home study group grows to upwards of eighty people and has to be moved to the local church.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments on December 13, 1636, to defend the colony against the Pequots.

(This organization is recognized today as the founding of the United States National Guard.)