Holland ties in with the emphasis on East Anglia origins I've propounded. This and the following post contain relevant excerpts from David Hackett Fischer, "Albion's Seed," Oxford University Press, 1989. Chris ======================= Regional Origins of the Puritan Migration closer study shows that some counties contributed more than others, and that one region in particular accounted for a majority of the founders of Massachusetts. It lay in the east of England. We may take its geographic center to be the market town of Haverhill, very near the point where the three counties of Suffolk, Essex and Cambridge come together. A circle drawn around the town of Haverhill with a radius of sixty miles will circumscribe the area from which most New England families came This area of approximately 7,000 square miles (about 8% of the land area of Britain today) roughly included the region that was defined in 1643 as the Eastern AssociationNorfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshireplus parts of Bedfordshire and Kent. Approximately 60 percent of immigrants to Massachusetts came from these nine eastern counties. Three of the largest contingents were from Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk. Also important was part of East Lincolnshire which lay near the English town of Boston, and a triangle of Kentish territory bounded by the towns of Dover, Sandwich and Canterbury. These areas were the core of the Puritan migration. On the periphery of New England's primary recruiting ground lay the great city of London. Less than 10 percent of emigrants to Massachusetts came from the metropolis The Puritan migration also drew from other parts of England, but often it did so through East Anglian connections. Throughout England, there were scattered parishes where charismatic ministers led their congregations to Massachusetts. But these leaders were themselves often East Anglians It would be a mistake to exaggerate the role of the eastern counties in the peopling of New England. A large minority (40%) came from the remaining thirty-four counties of England But many of these West Country Puritans did not long remain in the Bay Colony. They tended to move west to Connecticut, or south to Nantucket, or north to Maine. Diversity of regional origins became a major factor in the founding of other New England colonies. [Footnote: A detailed study has been made of one shipload of West Country Puritans who sailed in the Mary and John. They were recruited by the Rev. John White from Dorset, Devon and Somerset, and founded the town of Dorchester in Massachusetts. But many left the Bay Colony within a few years, and settled in Connecticut. The descendants of this onbe shipload included many leading Connecticut families: Wolcott, Griswold, Gibbs, Dewey, Burr and Gallup. John Winthrop called these settlers "the west country people." Dudley referred to them as "the western men."] The concentration of Puritans from East Anglia, and from the county of Suffolk, was especially great in the Winthrop Fleet of 1630. In the New World, their hegemony became very strong in the present boundaries of Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex and Middlesex counties in Massachusetts. This area became the heartland of its region; its communities are called "seed towns" in New England because so many other communities were founded from them. Most families in these seed towns came from the east of England. The majority was highly concentrated in its regional origin while the minority was widely scattered. As a consequence, the East Anglian core of New England's population had a cultural importance greater even than its numbers would suggest. [pages 3136]