MAP 2.6 The Puritan Migration to America, 1620–1640
Forty-five thousand Puritans left England for America and the West Indies between 1620 and 1640. About half traveled to the New England colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Connecticut, where they created durable societies with deep religious identities. Migrants from the three major centers of Puritanism in England — Yorkshire, East Anglia, and the West Country — commonly settled among those from their own region. Often they named American communities after their English towns of origin and tried to live as they had in Old England. For example, settlers from Rowley in Yorkshire transplanted their customary system of open-field agriculture to Rowley in Massachusetts Bay.