Shawmut

Shawmut was the peninsula on Massachusetts Bay where the English established Boston. Originally a small tract joined to the mainland by a narrow neck, it had three prominent hills and a spring of fresh water. Boston's harbour opened the town to the Atlantic, helping it grow into the political and commercial centre of Puritan New England.

In 1630 William Blaxton invited Puritan settlers from Charlestown to the peninsula, where they founded Boston near the spring. A century and a half later, disputes over British taxation brought resistance to a head with the Boston Tea Party. War followed: colonial forces besieged the British in Boston, and the British evacuated in March 1776. In the early nineteenth century the town's hills and shoreline were reshaped as the growing settlement expanded into surrounding waters.