New England Colonies Motives

When widespread immigration to the New World began, the immigration was not an equal distribution of people of all motives and cultures. People immigrated to certain areas of the New World based on what they hoped to achieve there. Some people were seeking relief from religious persecution, while others hoped to make a fortune in the new, abundant land. These varying motives lead to people with similar motives settling near other people with similar beliefs. One group of these people tended to immigrate to the region known today as New England. Immigrants who decided to settle in New England generally were trying to gain religious freedom. Many of the New England Immigrants were Pilgrims/Separatists and Puritans, all of whom were discriminated upon by the Church of England back in their homeland. The Pilgrims/Separatists settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620 (Bixby, New England Colonies: Massachusetts: Plymouth Colony). The Plymouth Colony suffered at first but endured and eventually became part of the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony. As their name implies, the Puritans did not want to completely separate themselves from the Church of England but, instead, wanted to purify the church. The Puritans arrived to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629 (Bixby, New England Colonies: Massachusetts: Massachusetts Bay …show more content…
Most of the northern colony farmers were subsistence farmers meaning that they just farmed what they needed to support their family as opposed to aiming for a huge profit. Instead, the northern colonies’ economy was based on industry and commerce. The “New England settlers engaged in the commercialization of fishing, naval stores, timber, shipbuilding, and milling” (Bixby, New England Colonies: Massachusetts: Massachusetts Bay Colony). Therefore, mercantilism drove the economy in New England and the northern