Massachusetts History (1620) from The Original 13-A Documentary History of Religion in America’s First Thirteen States (Amerisearch, Inc., 2009):
<Persecution of dissenting religious groups by the monarchs in Europe contributed to large scale migrations to America. The Plymouth Colony was founded by persecuted Pilgrim Separatists, who settled in 1620, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded Puritans dissenters of the Church of England, who settled in 1629.
Once in Massachusetts, Puritans did not tolerate dissenting Baptists, Congregationalists and Quakers, who fled to found Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, respectively. Legislation was passed against Baptists in 1644- 1678, and there was specific persecution of Quakers between 1656-1662. The King annulled Massachusetts’ charter in 1684.
Later, Sir Edmund Andros was sent over with a commission to unite New York and New England under his rule. He met opposition in his efforts to stop town meetings and enforce the Anglican Church as the established Church.
After news arrived in the colonies that James II was deposed in 1689 and that William and Mary were now ruling England, citizens of Boston rose in revolution, imprisoned Andros, and re-established their old colonial form of government.
In 1691, the Plymouth Colony and the Colony of Maine were combined with the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The new charter softened religious testss to hold office and vote, expanding “liberty of conscience,” except to Roman Catholics.
From its founding till 1780, Massachusetts had established the Puritan Congregational Church, which was nominally part of the Church of England.
The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, written by John Adams and still in effect, though with numerous amendments, established the Congregational Church and supported it with state taxes. Dissenting citizens were allowed to have their share of taxes designated to the Protestant Church of their choice.
Baptist leader Isaac Backus fought this provision, arguing that citizens should be free to voluntarily give financial support to the Church of their choice.
In 1775, the Continental Army was camped at Harvard College and on the Cambridge Commons, a force including Catholics from Maryland,
Pennsylvania, and Canada. When George Washington heard of plans for the annual Guy Fawkes procession and its “custom of burning the Effigy of the Pope,” he halted the event, expressing dismay at the lack of decency in such an activity.
The old Cathedral of the Holy Cross on Franklin Street, completed in 1803, was the only Catholic Church in the Boston area for decades. In 1808, the diocese of Boston was created from the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Catholics were allowed to hold office after an amendment was made to the Massachusetts Constitution in 1821 removing religious tests for State office-holders.
Beginning in the 1830’s, the Irish Potato Famine led thousands of Irish Catholics to immigrate, resulting in a backlash, such as the burning of Ursuline Convent in Charlestown in 1834.
Soon the immigrants overwhelmed the city, with over a thousand Irish living in East Cambridge in 1840. The diocese of Boston was enlarged to an Archdiocese in 1875, with jurisdiction over Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
The first Jewish settlement in Massachusetts was in 1716, though with little freedom. In the late 1700’s a number of prominent Jews lived in Boston, such as Moses Michael Hays, a neighbor of Paul Revere, and Abraham and Judah Touro, who helped finance the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Bunker Hill monument. In the 1840’s, large numbers of German Jews immigrated to Boston, organizing the first congregation, Ohabei Shalom, in 1843.
The first Jewish burial place was secured in 1844 and Boston’s first synagogue was built in 1852. When Polish Jews immigrated, dissension resulted in another congregation, Adath Israel, being formed.
In 1858, Polish families started Mishkan Israel, the successor of which is the Conservative temple, Mishkan Tefila in Chestnut Hill. In the 1870’s, Rabbi Solomon Schindler of the German Adath Israel congregation, led in the emerging Reform Judaism, with such changes as mixed seating of men and women, a choir and organ, English language worship, and even Sunday meetings.
Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise called for an English-language American prayer book and helped found the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1875. In the 1880’s, pogroms in Russia and Poland sent a great wave of orthodox Jewish immigrants to the United States, during which time Boston’s Jewish population grew from 3,000 in 1875 to 20,000 in 1895.
Russian Jews did not recognize Reform Judaism. In 1882, one boatload of Russian Jews was sent back to Russia and another landed in the “poorhouse” for lack of support from the local community.
Finally German Jews organized the American Federation of Jewish Charities to assist the new immigrants and by the late 1920’s, 80 percent of American Jews were from Eastern Europe.
In 1898, Jews from Lithuania bought a former Baptist Church. By 1910, there were 80,000 Jews in Boston and seven Yiddish newspapers. Jewish percentage of Harvard’s freshman class rose from 7 percent in 1900 to 21.5 percent in 1920. As of 2006, Boston had a population of 208,000 Jews.
As of 1911, Massachusetts had schools of theology at Cambridge (Protestant Episcopal), Newton (Baptist) and Waltham (New Church), in connection with Boston University (Methodist), Tufts College (Universalist) and Harvard (non-sectarian, and the affiliated Congregational Andover Theological Seminary at Cambridge).> 1620MH001
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1620MH001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Massachusetts History (1620), from The Original 13-A Documentary History of Religion in America’s First Thirteen States (Amerisearch, Inc., 2009).
This post originally appeared at https://americanminute.com/blogs/todays-american-minute/massachusetts-history-1620