The History Of New England From 1630 To 1649

"What a combination--John Winthrop, our first source on the early history of New England, and James Savage, the leading name in New England genealogy. "Savage's Edition of Winthrop's Journal," as this work is usually referred to, was inspired by the discovery of a third part (manuscript) of Winthrop's History of New England in the year 1816. Mr. Savage, a distinguished member of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the author of the seminal Genealogical Dictionary of New England, was assigned the task of transcribing the newly discovered manuscript and integrating it with the previously published pages of Winthrop's Journal. Applying his customary acumen to the task, Savage completed his transcription and collation of the History of New England in time for an 1825 publication, adding his own learned annotations about the men, women, and events Winthrop referred to, yielding a work perhaps twice as long as the original journal"--Publisher website (January 2009).

This abridged edition of Winthrop's journal, which incorporates about 40 percent of the governor's text, with his spelling and punctuation modernized, includes a lively Introduction and complete annotation. It also includes Winthrop's famous lay sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity", written in 1630. As in the fuller journal, this abridged edition contains the drama of Winthrop's life - his defeat at the hands of the freemen for governor, the banishment and flight of Roger Williams to Rhode Island, the Pequot War that exterminated his Indian opponents, and the Antinomian controversy. Here is the earliest American document on the perpetual contest between the forces of good and evil in the wilderness - Winthrop's recounting of how God's Chosen People escaped from captivity into the promised land. While he recorded all the sexual scandal - rape, fornication, adultery, sodomy, and buggery - it was only to show that even in Godly New England the Devil was continually at work, and man must be forever militant.

The following journal was written by John Winthrop, Esq., first governor of Massachusetts. When the design of settling a colony in New England was undertaken, Mr. Winthrop was chosen, with general consent, to conduct the enterprise. He arrived at Salem, with the Massachusetts charter, June 12, 1630. He was many years governor of that infant colony, and conducted himself with such address and unshaken rectitude, as to render his character universally respectable among his contemporaries, and his memory dear to posterity. He died March 26, 1649. Mr. Winthrop kept a journal of every important occurrence, from his first embarking for America, in 1630, to the year 1644. - Editor's preface.

This journal-entry-by- journal-entry describes the early history of New England by John Winthrop, the first governor of the colony of the Massachusetts Bay. It covers his arrival in Massachusetts Bay in 1630 until 1648, the year before his death. Originally published in Boston, 1853.