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Written Expressly for Rapid Reference: Massachusetts

In 1692, Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colony united under the name of Massachusetts. 1622.-A bloody Indian massacre occurred on March 22. Powhatan, being dead, the Indians determined to wipe out the colony. The plan was managed with consumnate secrecy, and so successfully carried out at a preconcerted signal that over three hundred men, women and children were slain in a single day. A converted Indian had told the story to a friend he wished to save, and thus Jamestown and the surrounding settlements were enabled to be prepared for the attack. The war that followed reduced the colony from 4,000 to 2,500; but the Indians were severely defeated, and did not disturb the whites for twenty years. In 1644 they massacred five hundred settlers, and in consequence were driven forever from the region. 1630. The first house was erected in Boston under Governor Winthrop in July. About one thousand people formed the new settlement. 1633-6.-Connecticut was settled at Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield. The Dutch claimed the territory, but the English by their settlements shut them out. 1634.-Sir George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, Secretary of State under James I., was anxious to procure an asylum for his co-religionists, the Catholics, and obtained a charter for a grant of land, which he named Maryland, in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria. Before the patent had received the King's seal, Sir George died, and his son Cecil, the second Lord Baltimore, carried out his father's philanthropic project.