Massachusetts was originally inhabited by tribes of the Algonquian language family, including the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Pocomtuc, Mahican, and Massachusett.^[85][86] While cultivation of crops like squash and corn were an important part of their diet, the people of these tribes hunted, fished, and searched the forest for most of their food.^[85] Villagers lived in lodges called wigwams as well as longhouses.^[86] Tribes were led by male or female elders known as sachems.^[87]

During the early 1600s, European colonists caused virgin soil epidemics such as smallpox, measles, influenza, and perhaps leptospirosis in what is now known as the northeastern region of the United States.^[88][89] Between 1617 and 1619, a disease that was most likely smallpox killed approximately 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans.^[90]

The first English colonists in Massachusetts Bay Colony landed with Richard Vines and spent the winter in Biddeford Pool near Cape Porpoise (after 1820 the State of Maine) in 1616. The Puritans arrived at Plymouth in 1620. This was the second permanent English colony in the part of North America that later became the United States, after the Jamestown Colony. The “First Thanksgiving” was celebrated by the Puritans after their first harvest in the “New World” and lasted for three days. They were soon followed by other Puritans, who colonized the Massachusetts Bay Colony—now known as Boston—in 1630.^[91]

The Puritans believed the Church of England needed to be further reformed along Protestant Calvinist lines, and experienced harassment due to the religious policies of King Charles I and high-ranking clergy such as William Laud, who would become Charles’s Archbishop of Canterbury, whom they feared were re-introducing “Romish” elements to the national church.^[92] They decided to colonize to Massachusetts, intending to establish what they considered an “ideal” religious society.^[93] The Massachusetts Bay Colony was colonized under a royal charter, unlike the Plymouth colony, in 1629.^[94] Both religious dissent and expansionism resulted in several new colonies being founded, shortly after Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, elsewhere in New England. The Massachusetts Bay banished dissenters such as Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams due to religious and political conflict. In 1636, Williams colonized what is now known as Rhode Island, and Hutchinson joined him there several years later. Religious intolerance continued, and among those who objected to this later that century were the English Quaker preachers Alice and Thomas Curwen, who were publicly flogged and imprisoned in Boston in 1676.^[95][96]

By 1641, Massachusetts had expanded inland significantly. The Commonwealth acquired the Connecticut River Valley settlement of Springfield, which had recently experienced disputes with—and defected from—its original administrators, the Connecticut Colony.^[97] This established Massachusetts’s southern border in the west.^[98] However, this became disputed territory until 1803–04 due to surveying problems, leading to the modern Southwick Jog.^[99]

In 1652 the Massachusetts General Court authorized Boston silversmith John Hull to produce local coinage in shilling, sixpence and threepence denominations to address a coin shortage in the colony.^[100] Prior to Hull’s local coinage production, the colony’s economy remained dependent on barter and foreign currency, including English, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and counterfeit coins.^[101] In 1661, shortly after the restoration of the British monarchy, the British government considered the Boston mint to be treasonous.^[102] However, the colony ignored the English demands to cease operations until at least 1682, when Hull’s contract as mintmaster expired, and the colony did not move to renew his contract or appoint a new mintmaster.^[103] The coinage was a contributing factor to the revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter in 1684.^[104]

Tensions with the Native Americans resulted in King Philip’s War from 1675 to 1678. The Native Americans, led by Metacom or King Philip, attacked half the towns in Massachusetts and destroyed many of them.^[105] During King William’s War and Queen Anne’s War, Massachusetts and the other New England colonies engaged in expeditionary campaigns in Quebec and Acadia.

In 1691, the English Crown issued a new charter uniting the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth—along with the territory of Maine—into the Province of Massachusetts Bay.^[106] Shortly after, the new province’s first governor, William Phips, arrived. The Salem witch trials also took place, where a number of men and women were hanged for alleged witchcraft.^[107]

The most destructive earthquake known to date in New England occurred on November 18, 1755, causing considerable damage across Massachusetts.^[108][109]

Massachusetts was a center of the movement for independence from Great Britain. Colonists in Massachusetts had long had uneasy relations with the British monarchy, including open rebellion under the Dominion of New England in the 1680s.^[106] Protests against British attempts to tax the colonies after the French and Indian War ended in 1763 led to the Boston Massacre in 1770, and the 1773 Boston Tea Party escalated tensions.^[110] In 1774, the Intolerable Acts targeted Massachusetts with punishments for the Boston Tea Party and further decreased local autonomy, increasing local dissent.^[111] Anti-Parliamentary activity by men such as Samuel Adams and John Hancock, followed by reprisals by the British government, were a primary reason for the unity of the Thirteen Colonies and the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775.^[112]

The Battles of Lexington and Concord were fought in Massachusetts in 1775, and initiated the American Revolutionary War.^[113] George Washington, later the first president of the future country, took over what would become the Continental Army after the battle. His first victory was the siege of Boston in the winter of 1775–76, after which the British were forced to evacuate the city.^[114] The event is still celebrated in Suffolk County only every March 17 as Evacuation Day.^[115]

On the coast, Salem became a center for privateering. Although the documentation is incomplete, about 1,700 letters of marque, issued on a per-voyage basis, were granted during the American Revolution. Nearly 800 vessels were commissioned as privateers, which were credited with capturing or destroying about 600 British ships.^[116]

Bostonian John Adams, known as the “Atlas of Independence”,^[117] was highly involved in both separation from Britain and the Constitution of Massachusetts, which effectively (the Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker cases as interpreted by William Cushing) made Massachusetts the first state to abolish slavery. David McCullough points out that an equally important feature was its placing for the first time the courts as a co-equal branch separate from the executive.^[118] (The Constitution of Vermont, adopted in 1777, represented the first partial ban on slavery among the states. Vermont became a state in 1791 but did not fully ban slavery until 1858 with the Vermont Personal Liberty Law. The Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition Act of 1780^[119] made Pennsylvania the first state to abolish slavery by statute – the second English colony to do so; the first having been the Colony of Georgia in 1735.) Later, Adams was active in early American foreign affairs and succeeded Washington as the second president of the United States. His son, John Quincy Adams, also from Massachusetts,^[120] would go on to become the nation’s sixth president.

From 1786 to 1787, an armed uprising led by Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays, now known as Shays’ Rebellion, wrought havoc throughout Massachusetts and ultimately attempted to seize the federal Springfield Armory.^[50] The rebellion was one of the major factors in the decision to draft a stronger national constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation.^[50] On February 6, 1788, Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the United States Constitution.^[121]

In 1820, Maine separated from Massachusetts and entered the Union as the 23rd state due to the ratification of the Missouri Compromise.^[122]

During the 19th century, Massachusetts became a national leader in the American Industrial Revolution, with factories around cities such as Lowell and Boston producing textiles and shoes, and factories around Springfield producing tools, paper, and textiles.^[123][124] The state’s economy transformed from one based primarily on agriculture to an industrial one, initially making use of water-power and later the steam engine to power factories. Canals and railroads were being used in the state for transporting raw materials and finished goods.^[125] At first, the new industries drew labor from Yankees on nearby subsistence farms, though they later relied upon immigrant labor from Europe and Canada.^[126][127]

Although Massachusetts was one of the first English colonies to legally institutionalize slavery in the early seventeenth century, the state ultimately transformed into a vital epicenter of progressivist and abolitionist activity in the decades leading up to the American Civil War. Furthermore, as secretary of the state board of education, Horace Mann championed systemic reforms that established the Massachusetts public school system as a national model.^[128] Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, both philosophers and writers from the state, also made major contributions to American philosophy.^[129] Furthermore, members of the transcendentalist movement within the state emphasized the importance of the natural world and emotion to humanity.^[129]

Although significant opposition to abolitionism existed early on in Massachusetts, resulting in anti-abolitionist riots between 1835 and 1837,^[130] abolitionist views there gradually increased throughout the next few decades.^[131][132] Abolitionists John Brown and Sojourner Truth lived in Springfield and Northampton, respectively, while Frederick Douglass lived in Boston and Susan B. Anthony in Adams. The works of such abolitionists contributed to Massachusetts’s actions during the Civil War. Massachusetts was the first state to recruit, train, and arm a Black regiment with White officers, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment.^[133] In 1852, Massachusetts became the first state to pass compulsory education laws.^[134]

The U.S. stock market experienced a steep decline in October 1929, marking the beginning of the Great Depression. The Boston Stock Exchange lost over 25 percent in two days. The BSE, nearly 100 years old at the time, had helped raise the capital that had funded many of the Commonwealth’s factories, railroads, and businesses.^[135]

With the departure of several manufacturing companies, the state’s industrial economy began to decline during the early 20th century. By the 1920s, competition from the American South and Midwest, followed by the Great Depression, led to the collapse of the three main industries in Massachusetts: textiles, shoemaking, and precision mechanics.^[136] This decline would continue into the latter half of the 20th century. Between 1950 and 1979, the number of Massachusetts residents involved in textile manufacturing declined from 264,000 to 63,000.^[137] The 1969 closure of the Springfield Armory, in particular, spurred an exodus of high-paying jobs from Western Massachusetts, which suffered greatly as it de-industrialized during the century’s last 40 years.^[138]

Massachusetts manufactured 3.4 percent of total United States military armaments produced during World War II, ranking tenth among the 48 states.^[139] After the world war, the economy of eastern Massachusetts transformed from one based on heavy industry into a service-based economy.^[140] Government contracts, private investment, and research facilities led to a new and improved industrial climate, with reduced unemployment and increased per capita income. Suburbanization flourished, and by the 1970s, the Route 128/Interstate 95 corridor was dotted with high-tech companies who recruited graduates of the area’s many elite institutions of higher education.^[141]

In 1987, the state received federal funding for the Central Artery/Tunnel Project. Commonly known as “the Big Dig“, it was, at the time, the biggest federal highway project ever approved.^[142] The project included making the Central Artery, part of Interstate 93, into a tunnel under downtown Boston, in addition to the re-routing of several other major highways.^{[143][failed verification]} The project was often controversial, with numerous claims of graft and mismanagement, and with its initial cost of $2.5 billion finalized at over $15 billion. Nonetheless, the Big Dig changed the face of Downtown Boston^[142] and connected areas that were once divided by elevated highway. Much of the raised old Central Artery was replaced with the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. The project also improved traffic conditions along several routes.^[142][143]

Politicians

The Kennedy family was prominent in 20th-century Massachusetts politics. The children of businessman and ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. included John F. Kennedy, who was a senator and U.S. president before his assassination in 1963; Ted Kennedy, a senator from 1962 until his death in 2009;^[144] and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a co-founder of the Special Olympics.^[145] In 1966, Massachusetts became the first state to directly elect an African American to the U.S. senate with Edward Brooke.^[146] George H. W. Bush, 41st President of the United States (1989–1993) was born in Milton in 1924.^[147]

Other Massachusetts politicians on the national level included Joseph W. Martin Jr., Speaker of the House (from 1947 to 1949 and 1953 to 1955) and leader of House Republicans from 1939 to 1959 (where he was the only Republican to serve as Speaker between 1931 and 1995),^[148] John W. McCormack, Speaker of the House in the 1960s, and Tip O’Neill, whose service as Speaker of the House from 1977 to 1987 was the longest continuous tenure in United States history.^[149]

On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to legalize same-sex marriage. This followed the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court‘s decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health in November 2003, which determined that the exclusion of same-sex couples from the right to a civil marriage was unconstitutional.^[62]

In 2004, Massachusetts senator John Kerry, who had won the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, lost to incumbent George W. Bush. Eight years later, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (the Republican nominee) lost to incumbent Barack Obama in 2012. Another eight years later, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren became a frontrunner in the Democratic primaries for the 2020 presidential election. However, she later suspended her campaign and endorsed presumptive nominee Joe Biden.^[150]

Two pressure cooker bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, at around 2:49 pm local time (EDT). The explosions killed three people and injured an estimated 264 others.^[151] The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) later identified the suspects as brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The ensuing manhunt ended on April 19 when thousands of law enforcement officers searched a 20-block area of nearby Watertown. Dzhokhar later said he was motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs and learned to build explosive devices from Inspire, the online magazine of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.^[152]

On November 8, 2016, Massachusetts voted in favor of the Massachusetts Marijuana Legalization Initiative, also known as Question 4.^[153]

The primary biome of inland Massachusetts is temperate deciduous forest.^[162]
Although much of Massachusetts had been cleared for agriculture, leaving only traces of old-growth forest in isolated pockets, secondary growth has regenerated in many rural areas as farms have been abandoned.^[163] Forests cover around 62% of Massachusetts.^[164] The areas most affected by human development include the Greater Boston area in the east and the Springfield metropolitan area in the west, although the latter includes agricultural areas throughout the Connecticut River Valley.^[165] There are 219 endangered species in Massachusetts.^[166]

A number of species are doing well in the increasingly urbanized Massachusetts. Peregrine falcons utilize office towers in larger cities as nesting areas,^[167] and the population of coyotes, whose diet may include garbage and roadkill, has been increasing in recent decades.^[168] White-tailed deer, raccoons, wild turkeys, and eastern gray squirrels are also found throughout Massachusetts. In more rural areas in the western part of Massachusetts, larger mammals such as moose and black bears have returned, largely due to reforestation following the regional decline in agriculture.^[169]

Massachusetts is located along the Atlantic Flyway, a major route for migratory waterfowl along the eastern coast.^[170] Lakes in central Massachusetts provide habitat for many species of fish and waterfowl, but some species such as the common loon are becoming rare.^[171] A significant population of long-tailed ducks winter off Nantucket. Small offshore islands and beaches are home to roseate terns and are important breeding areas for the locally threatened piping plover.^[172] Protected areas such as the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge provide critical breeding habitat for shorebirds and a variety of marine wildlife including a large population of grey seals. Since 2009, there has been a significant increase in the number of Great white sharks spotted and tagged in the coastal waters off of Cape Cod.^{[173][174][175]}

Freshwater fish species in Massachusetts include bass, carp, catfish, and trout, while saltwater species such as Atlantic cod, haddock, and American lobster populate offshore waters.^[176] Other marine species include Harbor seals, the endangered North Atlantic right whales, as well as humpback whales, fin whales, minke whales, and Atlantic white-sided dolphins.^[177]

The European corn borer, a significant agricultural pest, was first found in North America near Boston in 1917.^[178]

Most of Massachusetts has a humid continental climate, with cold winters and warm summers. Far southeast coastal areas are the broad transition zone to Humid Subtropical climates. The warm to hot summers render the oceanic climate rare in this transition, only applying to exposed coastal areas such as on the peninsula of Barnstable County. The climate of Boston is quite representative for the commonwealth, characterized by summer highs of around 81 °F (27 °C) and winter highs of 35 °F (2 °C), and is quite wet. Frosts are frequent all winter, even in coastal areas due to prevailing inland winds. Boston has a relatively sunny climate for a coastal city at its latitude, averaging over 2,600 hours of sunshine a year.

Climate change in Massachusetts will affect both urban and rural environments, including forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and coastal development.^{[180][181][182]} The Northeast is projected to warm faster than global average temperatures; by 2035, according to the U. S. Global Change Research Program, the Northeast is “projected to be more than 3.6°F (2°C) warmer on average than during the preindustrial era”.^[182] As of August 2016, the EPA reports that Massachusetts has warmed by over two degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.1 degrees Celsius.^[183]

Shifting temperatures also result in the shifting of rainfall patterns and the intensification of precipitation events. To that end, average precipitation in the Northeast United States has risen by ten percent from 1895 to 2011, and the number of heavy precipitation events has increased by seventy percent during that time.^[183] These increased precipitation patterns are focused in the winter and spring. Increasing temperatures coupled with increasing precipitation will result in earlier snow melts and subsequent drier soil in the summer months.^[184]

The shifting climate in Massachusetts will result in a significant change to the state’s built environment and ecosystems. In Boston alone, costs of climate change-related storms will result in $5 to $100 billion in damage.^[183]

Warmer temperatures will also disrupt bird migration and flora blooming. With these changes, deer populations are expected to increase, resulting in a decrease in underbrush which smaller fauna use as camouflage. Additionally, rising temperatures will increase the number of reported Lyme disease cases in the state. Ticks can transmit the disease once temperatures reach 45 degrees, so shorter winters will increase the window of transmission. These warmer temperatures will also increase the prevalence of Asian tiger mosquitoes, which often carry the West Nile virus.^[183]

To fight this change, the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs has outlined a path to decarbonize the state’s economy. On April 22, 2020, Kathleen A. Theoharides, the state’s Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, released a Determination of Statewide Emissions limits for 2050. In her letter, Theoharides stresses that as of 2020, the Commonwealth has experienced property damage attributable to climate change of more than $60 billion. To ensure that the Commonwealth experiences warming no more than 1.5 °C of pre-industrialization levels, the state will work towards two goals by 2050: to achieve net-zero emissions, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent overall.^[185]

The state’s most populous ethnic group, non-Hispanic white, has declined from 95.4% in 1970 to 67.6% in 2020.^[190]

As of 2011, non-Hispanic whites were involved in 63.6% of all the births, while 36.4% of the population of Massachusetts younger than age 1 was minorities (at least one parent who was not non-Hispanic white).^[200] One major reason for this is that non-Hispanic whites in Massachusetts recorded a total fertility rate of 1.36 in 2017, the second-lowest in the country after neighboring Rhode Island.^[201]

As late as 1795, the population of Massachusetts was nearly 95% of English ancestry.^[212] During the early and mid-19th century, immigrant groups began arriving in Massachusetts in large numbers; first from Ireland in the 1840s;^[213] today the Irish are the largest ancestry group in the state at nearly 20% of the total population. Others arrived later from Quebec as well as places in Europe such as Italy, Portugal, and Poland.^[214] In the early 20th century, a large percentage of black immigrants were from the Caribbean island of Barbados, and mostly settled in Cambridge and Boston’s South End. In the Great Migration of 1910 to 1970, African Americans migrated to Massachusetts, although in somewhat fewer numbers than many other northern states.^[215] Later in the 20th century, immigration from Latin America increased considerably. More than 156,000 Chinese Americans made their home in Massachusetts in 2014,^[216] and Boston hosts a growing Chinatown accommodating heavily traveled Chinese-owned bus lines to and from Chinatown, Manhattan in New York City. Massachusetts also has large Dominican, Puerto Rican, Haitian, Cape Verdean and Brazilian populations.^[217] Boston’s South End and Jamaica Plain are both gay villages, as is nearby Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod.^[218]

The largest ancestry group in Massachusetts are the Irish, at 19% of the population, who live in significant numbers throughout the state but form more than 40% of the population along the South Shore in Norfolk and Plymouth counties. In both counties overall, Irish-Americans comprise around 25% of the population.

Italians form the second-largest ethnic group in the state (10.8%), but form a plurality in some suburbs north of Boston and in a few towns in the Berkshires. English Americans, the third-largest (9.2%) group, form a plurality in some western towns. French and French Canadians also form a significant part (7.2%),^[219] with sizable populations in Bristol, Hampden, and Worcester Counties, along with Middlesex county especially concentrated in the areas surrounding Lowell and Lawrence.^[220][221] Lowell is home to the second-largest Cambodian community of the nation.^[222] Massachusetts is home to a small community of Greek Americans as well, which according to the American Community Survey there are 61,234 of them scattered along the state (0.9% of the total state population).^[219] In Watertown, there is a significant minority population of Armenian Americans.^[223] There are also several populations of Native Americans in Massachusetts. The Wampanoag tribe maintains reservations at Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard and at Mashpee on Cape Cod—with an ongoing native language revival project underway since 1993, while the Nipmuc maintain two state-recognized reservations in the central part of the state, including one at Grafton.^[224]

Massachusetts has avoided many forms of racial strife seen elsewhere in the US, but examples such as the successful electoral showings of the nativist (mainly anti-Catholic) Know Nothings in the 1850s,^[225] the controversial Sacco and Vanzetti executions in the 1920s,^[226] and Boston’s opposition to desegregation busing in the 1970s.^[227]

The US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos may be of any race, and “NH” means “Non-Hispanic”.

The most common varieties of American English spoken in Massachusetts, other than General American, are the cot-caught distinct, rhotic, western Massachusetts dialect and the cot-caught merged, non-rhotic, eastern Massachusetts dialect which is popularly known as a “Boston accent”.^[228]

As of 2010, 78.93% (4,823,127) of Massachusetts residents 5 and older spoke English at home as a first language, while 7.50% (458,256) spoke Spanish, 2.97% (181,437) Portuguese, 1.59% (96,690) Chinese (which includes Cantonese and Mandarin), 1.11% (67,788) French, 0.89% (54,456) French Creole, 0.72% (43,798) Italian, 0.62% (37,865) Russian, and Vietnamese was spoken as a primary language by 0.58% (35,283) of the population over 5. In total, 21.07% (1,287,419) of Massachusetts’s population 5 and older spoke a first language other than English.^[190][229]

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