New Englanders spread across the landscape town by town during the seventeenth century. (For the sake of legibility, only a few of the more important towns are shown on the map.)
> MAP ACTIVITY
READING THE map: Using the dates on the map, create a chronology of the establishment of towns in New England. What physical features correspond to the earliest habitation by English settlers?
CONNECTIONS: Why were towns so much more a feature of seventeenth-century New England than of the Chesapeake (see also "Cultivating Land and Faith")? How did Puritan dissent influence the settlement of New England colonies?