Massachusetts Bay Colony Genealogy

The Massachusetts Bay Colony (sometimes called the Massachusetts Bay Company, for the institution that founded it) was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, centered around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The area is now in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of the 50 United States.

The Plymouth colony was not a part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was independent 1620 to 1691 before annexation by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691.

The repressive nature of the religious government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in large scale emigration from the area to the west areas including but not limited to, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and New York as well as western part of Massachusetts.