John Winthrop

                John Winthrop was born on January 12, 1587, in Edwardstone, Suffolk, England, and his birth was recorded in the parish register at Groton.  He was born into a wealthy landowning and merchant family to Adam and Ann Browne Winthrop.  His father’s family ran a successful textile business, and his father was a lawyer and prosperous landowner with several properties in Suffolk.  His mother also came from a well-to-do family with properties in Suffolk and Essex.  When Winthrop was young, his father was a director at Trinity College.  His family moved to Groton Manor when Winthrop’s uncle John (Adam’s brother) immigrated to Ireland.

                Winthrop was first tutored at home and then most likely went to grammar school.  He came to an early and deep understanding of divinity due to being exposed to discussions between his father and clergymen.  He was admitted to Trinity College in December 1602, where he studied law and matriculated a few months later.  At Trinity he interacted with “John Cotton and John Wheelwright, two men who would also have important roles in New England.”

                John Winthrop might have left school early and married at a young age because of a “need to control his baser impulses.”  In 1604 Winthrop and a friend traveled to Great Stambridge in Essex where they stayed with a family friend.  Winthrop was impressed with their daughter, Mary Forth, and married her on April 16, 1605, at Great Stambridge.  The couple had five children but only three survived to adulthood.  John Winthrop, the Younger, was their oldest child, and he became a governor and magistrate of Connecticut.  Their last two children were girls who died shortly after birth, and Mary died in 1615 from complications of the last birth.  The family lived on the Forth estate at Great Stambridge until “1613 when Adam Winthrop transferred the family holdings in Groton to Winthrop, who then became Lord of the Manor at Groton.  Winthrop married Margaret Tyndall (married 1618-1647) and had one son, Henry Winthrop with her.  He was also married to Thomasine Clopton and Martha Rainsborough but no other details were given for these marriages.

                Winthrop was not involved 1628 when the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the first major settlement in New England after the establishment of Plymouth Colony; however, the anti-Puritan King Charles began a crackdown on Nonconformist religious thought in 1629 and Winthrop became involved.  In 1629 he was elected governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  In April 1630 he led the first large wave of migrants from England for the year to the New World and founded a number of communities on the shores of Massachusetts Bay and the Charles River.  Between 1629 and his death in 1649, he served as governor for 12 of the colony’s first 20 years of existence.  “His writings and vision of the colony as a Puritan `city upon a hill’ dominated New England colonial development, influencing the government and religion of neighboring colonies.”  President Ronald Reagan might have been thinking of him when he spoke of a “shining city upon a hill.”

                As governor, Winthrop was “a force of comparative moderation in the religiously conservative colony” and clashed with “the more conservative Thomas Dudley and the more liberal Roger Williams and Henry Vane.  Winthrop was a “respected political figure” but “his attitude toward governance was somewhat authoritarian:  he resisted attempts to widen voting and other civil rights beyond a narrow class of religiously approved individuals, opposed attempts to codify a body of laws that the colonial magistrates would be bound by, and also opposed unconstrained democracy, calling it `the meanest and worst of all forms of government.’  The authoritarian and religiously conservative nature of Massachusetts rule was influential in the formation of neighboring colonies, which were in some instances formed by individuals and groups opposed to the rule of the Massachusetts elders.”

                When his son John became one of the founders of the Connecticut Colony, Winthrop “wrote one of the leading historical accounts of the early colonial period. 

                John Winthrop died at age 61 on March 26, 1649, in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony.  His descendants number in the thousands today, and his long list of descendants includes famous Americans.  In addition to his son John, who was the first governor of the Saybrook Colony, “later generations of his family continued to play an active role in New England politics well into the 19^th century.  Twentieth century descendants include former Massachusetts Senator and current Secretary of State, John Kerry and educator Charles William Eliot.”  Winthrop’s writings continue to be an influence on politicians today.  The towns of Winthrop, Massachusetts, and Winthrop, Maine, are named in his honor.  Winthrop House at Harvard University and Winthrop Hall at Bowdoin College were named jointly for him and his descendant John Winthrop, who served briefly as President of Harvard.  The Winthrop Building on Water Street in Boston, one of the city’s first skyscrapers, was built on the site of one of his homes.