Map of New Netherland, Virginia, and New England by Joan Vinckeboons (1639)

The religions mentioned herein were persecuted or outlawed in 1600’s Europe.

Boston, the “City on the Hill” was founded by Puritans in 1630 to mostly to serve god.  Other religions soon occupied New England, themselves also seeking freedom. The Back Bay was used through the 1640’s for the trade of seafood, slaves, and sugar. This challenged the Puritanical mores and ethics of “a just price for goods” to mitigate the “sway” of trade.

In the 1660’s, backlash from worldly gain forced many of Boston’s wealthy traders and religious dissenters elsewhere. Puritans left Boston earlier, settling New Haven in 1638, a slow-growing planned community. Many Quaker and Jewish merchants moved their fleets to the harbor of Newport, expanding their role in the slave trade and the manufacture of rope and sails.

Amsterdam began as Dutch fur post in 1625 and became a safe haven for the persecuted Jews of Portugal and Spain. In 1664, the British take New Amsterdam and rename it New York. Charleston was settled in 1670 by English Bermudans along secular lines to be a “great port towne.” It would attract a diverse lot of people trading rice, lumber, and African slaves.

The wealthy Quaker, William Penn, was granted land by Charles for debts owed to Penn’s father. He established Pennsylvania in 1682, a distance from Europe and New England as a refuge for Quakers. Considered a “green country town” in it’s early days, by 1800, Philadelphia and it’s suburbs would be the biggest city in North America.