ft be jfoim&incj of Borcbester, flfeaesacbueetts, 

 anb tbe IRev. 3obn Wbite, 



By Captain J. E. ACLAND, F.S.A. 



Read February, 1st, 1921. 



|HE founding of Dorchester, Mass., dates from 

 the year 1630, i.e., ten years later than the better 

 known expedition of the Mayflower to Province- 

 town and Plymouth. The movement that induced 

 "The Pilgrims," to leave their homes, and face the risks and 

 hardships of the "Great Enterprise," was in its origin of a 

 definitely religions character, thus quaintly recorded by a 

 chronicler of the period. 



He writes "When many most godly and religious people 

 that dissented from the way of worship then established by 

 law in the realm of England were being denied the free 

 exercise of religion after the manner they professed according 

 to the light of God's Word, and their own consciences, they 

 did remove themselves and their families into the Colony of 

 the Massachusetts Bay in New England, that they might 

 Worship God without any burthensome impositions, which 

 was the very motive and cause of their coining." 



