In September 1630, the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s Court of Assistants ordered that “Trimountaine”—the English settlers’ name for the peninsula long known to the Massachusett people as Shawmut—be called Boston. The order is dated September 7 in the colony’s Old Style calendar; some modern accounts convert it to mid-September.
Governor John Winthrop and the Puritan settlers had arrived in New England earlier that summer, first reaching Salem before moving among settlements including Charlestown. Seeking a more dependable freshwater source, they accepted the invitation of William Blaxton, the peninsula’s English resident, who directed them to a spring at Shawmut. There they established the settlement that became Boston.
The new name honored Boston, Lincolnshire, England, a town closely associated with leading figures in the migration, including Isaac and Arbella Johnson. Isaac Johnson, a major leader of the Charlestown community, is often credited with naming the new settlement shortly before his death later that month.
The renaming signaled that the colonists regarded the settlement as more than a temporary outpost. Its peninsula location, harbor access, and freshwater supply made it a promising site for the colony’s growing civic and commercial center. For Winthrop and his fellow Puritans, it was also a place to build the disciplined Christian society they hoped would serve as an example to the world.
From a small, religiously governed settlement, Boston developed into a major center of Atlantic trade, publishing, education, and political resistance to British rule. Yet its founding story also rests on land already known, used, and named by Indigenous people. The change from Shawmut and Trimountaine to Boston marks both the establishment of an English colonial town and a consequential transformation of an Indigenous landscape.
Image Old Elm and Boston Common via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
