New England History

After 66 days crossing the Atlantic, 102 Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower anchored in Plymouth Harbor. They drafted the Mayflower Compact — one of the first frameworks of self-governance in America — and established Plymouth Colony, the second successful English settlement in North America.

The Massachusetts General Court voted to establish a college in Newtowne (later Cambridge) — making Harvard the oldest institution of higher education in America. Named after clergyman John Harvard, it set the standard for the academic tradition that would define New England for centuries.

Boston Light, on Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor, became the first lighthouse built in what would become the United States. The original tower was destroyed by the British during the Revolution and rebuilt in 1783 — the current structure is the second-oldest working lighthouse in America.

British soldiers fired into a crowd of colonists near the Custom House, killing five men including Crispus Attucks — often regarded as the first casualty of the American Revolution. Paul Revere's engraving of the event became one of the most powerful pieces of propaganda in American history.

"The shot heard round the world." British regulars marched from Boston to seize colonial military supplies in Concord. Militia met them on Lexington Green at dawn — eight Americans died in the opening volley. At Concord's North Bridge, the colonists fired back. The American Revolution had begun.

Colonel Thomas Crafts read the Declaration of Independence from the balcony of the Old State House to a jubilant crowd below. Church bells rang across the city. That night, the royal coat of arms was torn from the State House and burned in a bonfire. Boston's ties to the Crown were severed for good.

By the 1820s, New Bedford was the richest city per capita in the world — all because of whale oil. Over 300 whaling ships sailed from its harbor, and the industry shaped everything from the city's architecture to Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. The Seamen's Bethel chapel, where Melville placed Father Mapple's sermon, still holds services.

Frederick Douglass gave his first major public speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society convention on Nantucket Island. William Lloyd Garrison had been publishing The Liberator from Boston since 1831. New England became the heart of the abolition movement — with Boston's Black community, the Underground Railroad, and radical publishers fueling the fight against slavery.

What began as a small maritime collection in 1929 grew into the nation's leading maritime museum — a 19-acre village preserving New England's seafaring heritage. The museum acquired the Charles W. Morgan, the last wooden whaling ship in the world, and recreated an entire 19th-century coastal village. It became a symbol of how New England chose to preserve its past rather than pave over it.