4 The soils of New England are exceptionally complex and varied—more so than other American regions. Some are rich and fertile—especially alluvial soil in the flood plains of the Charles, Merrimack and Connecticut river valleys. Farmers in the Connecticut Valley still raise tobacco with high success on productive fields which have been cultivated continuously for three centuries. There is excellent soil in Concord, Dedham and the original Sudbury (now the town of Wayland).

5 Winthrop to Sir Nathaniel Rich, 22 May 1634, Winthrop Papers, III, 167; on farming in Massachusetts see Darrett B. Rutman, “Governor Winthrop’s Garden Crop: The Significance of Agriculture in the Early Commerce of Massachusetts Bay,” WMQ3 20 (1963), 396-415; idem, The Husbandmen of Plymouth: Farms and Villages in the Old Colony (Boston, 1967); Robert R. Walcott, “Husbandry in Colonial New England,” NEQ 9 (1936), 218-52.

6 Rutman, “Governor Winthrop’s Garden Crop,” 405.