The Winthrop Fleet has arrived, but Salem is not what they had expected. John Winthrop leads an expedition to explore Massachusetts Bay, meets Samuel Maverick – whose descendants would be consequential in the world of sports – and William Blackstone (Blaxton), and decides to move the new immigrants to Charlestown, Boston, and other future towns in the region. The winter is brutal, but it makes the Puritan settlers resilient, and their hunger is relieved when the Lyon arrives on February 5, 1631, with new supplies and a minister named Roger Williams. All that and the origin of the Boston Common and a botanical puzzle concerning “snakeweed”!

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Selected references for this episode

John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul

Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father

George Bancroft, History Of The United States Of America Volume 1

Thomas Hutchinson, The History of Massachusetts, from the First Settlement Thereof in 1628, Until the Year 1750

Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop

David Hackett Fischer, African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals

Gutierrezia sarothrae

William Blaxton (Blackstone)

Map of Boston in 1630, superimposed on today’s Boston