Between 1628 and 1640 perhaps 20,000 Puritans would leave England and settle in Boston and environs. Then English immigration to Massachusetts would stop as abruptly as it started. The Puritans of Ma

This is our one hundredth episode, at least by some counts, and also our first interview. Eric Yanis, the creator and host of The Other States of America History Podcast, agreed to be our first inter

This episode is about the trading between the Dutch of New Netherland, the English first of Plymouth and then of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Algonquian and Iroquoian tribes in the region during

In this episode, we return to New Mexico and look at the ambitious mission-building program of the Franciscans in the Pueblos of New Mexico during the long seventy years between the founding of Santa

In this episode we roll back the timeline a bit to 1602, and recount the exploration and mapping of the coast of California by Sabastian Vizcaino. He would name many of the famous places along that c

This is an encore presentation of one of most popular episodes, "Notes on Thanksgiving," which dropped on Thanksgiving Day, 2021. This is a great pre-listen for your Thanksgiving celebration, insofar

This Sidebar episode starts with my notes from my trip to Cuba "in support of the Cuban people," one of the exceptions to the general ban on Americans traveling there. Those notes lead to a story f

This episode is about a happy-go-lucky Englishman named Thomas Morton, whom William Bradford dubbed the Lord of Misrule, and who would be a thorn in the side of Puritans in New England for more than

New Netherland gets off to a rocky start, with uncommonly poor leadership. Fortunately, a very capable leader, Peter Minuit, steps forward after a catastrophic attack on the Dutch at Fort Orange by t

This is the beginning of the story of New Netherland, the Dutch colonization of today's New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and elsewhere in the mid-Atlantic. New Netherland was a long-ignored period