America’s founding myth depicts the establishment of the Puritan colony, celebrated at Thanksgiving, as the point of origin of the country. The history of the indigenous peoples on whose lands the English moved are too often a marginal or a neglected part of the founding myth of New England and America. UMass Lowell History Professor […]

Since the arrival of settlers in the 17th century, enormous changes have taken place across central New England and what our remnant old growth stands look like today. Tob Wessels from Antioch University and David Foster of the Harvard Forest narrator this story that was filmed in 2018 by New England Forests. They point out […]

Author and Professor of Early American History at Harvard University Jill Lepore spoke about her book, The Name of War, during a presentation at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History on December 1, 2010. Lepore traces the meanings attached to this brutally destructive war and examines early colonial accounts that depict King Philip’s men as savages and […]

University of Pittsburgh History Professor James Hill summarized the history of attempts to establish Christianity among the Native People in New England during the latter half of the 17th century in a 24-minute YouTube video on August 12, 2020. Dr. Hill began with a description of how John Eliot and Thomas Mayhew Jr. worked to […]

Established in 1691, the Bridgewater Iron Works at the village known as Stanley was the first to produce iron in the American colonies. By 1860 it had become the second largest producer of iron in the U.S. It was purchased in 1899 by the Stanley Black & Decker Company, formerly known as The Stanley Works, which began […]

A prominent landmark along the Satucket River, Sachem Rock is a large outcropping of bedrock called Wonnocoote (Wonnocooto) by the Pokanokets who inhabited the area before 1649. Shortened to “Cootah Hill” in the early part of the 20th century, the rock apparently acquired the name Sachem or Sachem’s Rock as early as 1800. Satucket is an ancient […]

The Plimoth colonists were a diverse group of Separatists and Anglicans, English and Dutch, some religious and some not! They brought with them varied musical experiences, and Plimoth Colony heard not only psalms but also catches, ballads, and dance tunes. The Seven Times Salt instrumental group follows the settlers from England to religious refuge in the Netherlands […]

[Boston Globe] On Jan. 5, just one day before the insurrection, the Massachusetts Legislature voted to form a commission to study and recommend permanent changes to the state seal and motto. Governor Charlie Baker signed the measure on Monday. The 19th-century seal, which appears in the center of the state flag, depicts a colonist’s arm […]

In 1662, the newly restored king of England, Charles II, demanded that the Massachusetts Bay colony alter their laws to align with imperial priorities. Two years later, four royal commissioners arrived to enforce these demands. What followed was a season of extraordinary political activism, as colonial men and women mobilized to protect their liberties and […]

A mural on the east-facing wall of 32 Custom House Street in downtown Providence by artist Gaia entitled “Still Here,” funded by The Avenue Concept, depicts Lynsea Montanari, a member of the Narragansett tribe and an educator at the Tomaquag Museum in Exeter, Rhode Island, holding a picture of  Princess Red Wing, a Narragansett/Pokanoket historian and educator who founded the museum […]