1 Charlestown (pronounced Charlton) was not named directly for Charles I, but after the Charles River, which Captain John Smith had named long before the Puritans arrived.

2 The following towns in the Massachusetts Bay Colony were named after English communities through 1660:

Haverhill (Suffolk)

Newbury (Berkshire)

Rowley (Yorkshire)

Ipswich (Suffolk)

Salisbury (Wiltshire)

Weymouth (Dorset)

Lynn (Norfolk)

Medford (Kent)

Sudbury (Suffolk)

Cambridge (Cambridge)

Boston (Lincoln)

Dorchester (Dorset)

Dedham (Essex)

Braintree (Essex)

Hingham (Norfolk)

Woburn (Bedfordshire)

Andover (Hampshire)

Chelmsford (Essex)

Groton (Suffolk)

Lancaster (Lancashire)

Hadley (Suffolk)

Newton (Norfolk)

Reading (Berkshire)

Wrentham (Suffolk)

Boxford (Suffolk)

Marlborough (Wiltshire)

Framingham (Suffolk)

Springfield (Essex)

Hull (Yorkshire)

Malden (Essex)

Topsfield (Essex)

Billerica (Essex)

Gloucester (Gloucs.)

Manchester (Lancashire)

Northampton (Northamptonshire)

 

Of these 35 names, 22 came from the counties of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Kent, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and Bedfordshire). The rest were scattered broadly throughout England. Two town names (Roxbury and Medfield) were of unknown origin. See William H. Whetmore, “On the Origins of the Names of Towns in Massachusetts,” MAHSP 12 (1871-73), 391-413. On the naming of Boston by Puritans from Lincoln (not by Capt. John Smith) see evidence cited in G. A. Taylor, “Lincolnshire and Massachusetts,” LNQ 21 (1930), 4-6.

3 This finding is important because it confirms the evidence of ship lists. Breen and Foster wondered whether the predominance of East Anglian emigrants in those documents might have been merely a source-bias. The answer is clearly negative. The same pattern appears in place names, and also in the origins of Massachusetts elites. We have three independent sources for English regional origins in the great migration. All yield similar results.