We think of Boston, Massachusetts, as the starting point for the American Revolution. But the history of Boston long predates the 1770s - into the Middle Ages and beyond.

Welcome to the forebears of Boston, Massachusetts - in the small town of Boston, Lincolnshire, on the east coast of England. Few Americans have heard of it, but Boston, Lincolnshire, plays a unique role in US history as the source of many of the Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony and consequently, and unsurprisingly, named their new town Boston.

They chose the name not simply for reasons of nostalgia. As Puritans, they wanted to re-create the society which they had largely established in Boston, LIncolnshire, but without the pressure for religious conformity they had faced under the Church of England. Prominent Puritans in Lincolnshire - people such as Thomas Dudley, later a Massachusetts governor, Richard Bellingham, Isaac Johnson and his wife, Lady Arbella, Simon Bradstreet and his soon-to-be famous wife, the poet Anne Bradstreet - sought to establish a new Puritan society on the far side of the Atlantic. Ministers John Cotton and Samuel Whiting, also from Boston, provided spiritual leadership.

This talk, by Neil Wright, Boston's leading historian, describes the town from which the Puritans came, how that town became a Puritan stronghold, and what compelled them to leave their English home. It will describe the old town and its isolated setting amidst extensive fens, its medieval street layout and ancient buildings.

Seventeenth century Boston, Lincolnshire, had a proud past but was less prosperous than it had been hundreds of years earlier. Boston had received its charter of incorporation as late as 1546 and by the early 1600s Puritans dominated the town and created the sort of community that they desired. It had become a secure Puritan town.

Puritans occupied positions as vicar of the town's only church, master of the grammar school, magistrates, member of Parliament, and aldermen of the corporation that ran the town. The Puritan ethos of old Boston attracted other Puritans to visit the town to hear John Cotton's sermons or to live there. These included Isaac Johnson and his wife Lady Arbella who at times lived in the Earl of Lincoln's house in Boston, and Anne Hutchinson and her family from Alford. It was only when pressure from London and the Church of England hierarchy became unbearable, with increasing repression and financial demands by the King, that they decided to transplant that community from the old world to the new. When the men from old Boston gave their new leading town the name of “Boston” it was a desire to recreate on new soil the sort of Puritan community that they had enjoyed in old Boston. The Puritan ethos of the new Boston has influenced the character of the United States, and that ethos had been brought to
Massachusetts by the men from old Boston in Lincolnshire.

In this presentation, historian Neil Wright tours the buildings that would have been familiar to those Puritans who crossed the Atlantic - the massive St Botolph's church, the old brick Hussey Tower, the Guildhall where many of the future leaders of Massachusetts had governed the old town, the Grammar School whose schoolmaster they appointed, and a small number of private homes. Nearby is Tattershall Castle, home of the Earl of Lincoln in the 1630s, where Thomas Dudley and Simon Bradstreet had worked.

In the last two centuries the links between the two Bostons have been marked in various ways, including civic visits, financial help to restore old buildings, and meetings between people interested in the history of both the town and the city. The Partnership of Historic Bostons, of which Neil Wright is a board member, was born out of one such connection.

Neil Wright is a published historian who was born and bred in Boston, Lincolnshire, England. From 1962 to 2010 he worked in county government in Lincolnshire and and was nominated for a national award. Since retirement he has continued to publish books and articles, and give talks, on the history of Boston and Lincolnshire. He is a chairman emeritus of the Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, founded in 1844, and continues to be a leading member.

FIND OUT MORE

State Street Trust Company of Boston, "Towns of New England and Old England, ireland and Scotland, Part II (Boston, Mass.: 1920)

A.M. Cook, "Lincolnshire LInks with the USA" (Lincoln: 1956)

Clive Holmes, Seventeenth-Century LIncolnshire (Lincoln: History of LIncolnshire Committee, 1980)

Neil Wright, The Book of Boston (Buckingham: 1986)