The story of Boston Author:Arthur Gilman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WINTHROP AND HIS COMPANIONS. Of the twelve men who thus boldly declared their independence, and expressed their willingness to become pilgrims, the first... more » to fix our attention now, as we look at the list under the light of subsequent history, is Mr. John Winthrop. Probably his name would have attracted us if we had examined the list in the year 1630, for the man who bore it was evidently a person of no mean importance. He was a native of the little hamlet of Groton in Suffolk, a few miles west from Ipswich, a place so insignificant that it has faded from our maps, and its very name is dropped from the great gazetteers of our day. It is of importance to us in connection with the annals of Boston and of America, however, and will always be remembered as having given its name to other places in the New World. John Winthrop was a late comer in the group of men interested in this scheme for colonization. His name does not occur in the records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay until the meeting after that of August twenty-sixth, and we do not even know that he was actually present at any meeting until October, when he was appointed tomake arrangements of a business nature for those who intended to emigrate. Though he comes thus suddenly into prominence, the course of his life, laid before us in his " Life and Letters," shows that he had been much engaged both in considerations of the progress of New England and old England. He felt (to draw from a carefully written paper known as " General Considerations for the Plantation of New England," which was circulated among some of the friends of the enterprise) that he had fallen upon disastrous times; that fountains of learning in his native country were corrupted ; that all arts and trades were carried on in such...« less