Thomas Morton

Thomas Morton (c. 1579 – 1647) is known today for building the first Maypole in America; it was cut down after two years by the Puritans. He also was an early colonist in North America from Devon, England. He was a lawyer, writer, and social reformer known for studying American Indian culture, and he founded the colony of Merrymount, located in Quincy, Massachusetts. He is the author of New English Canaan, an anti-Puritan work which could be considered the first book banned in America, as it was banned by the Puritans in colonial times.

Mount Wollaston

Only two years after the founding of Plymouth Colony, Thomas Morton took a three-month exploratory trip to America in 1622, but was back in England by early 1623 complaining of intolerance among ruling elements of the Puritan community. He returned in 1624 as a senior partner in a Crown-sponsored trading venture aboard the ship Unity with his associate Captain Wollaston and 30 indentured young men. They began trading for furs on a spit of land belonging to the Algonquian tribes. They called their location Mount Wollaston.

Wollaston and Morton immediately began selling liquor and firearms to the Indians, disregarding the laws of Plymouth Colony.

Disappointed in their lack of success, Captain Wollaston went to Virginia in 1626 with some of the indentured men to sell their contracts to others. He appointed another man in charge. Morton, seeing his chance when the new leader was away, got the remaining men drunk, then convinced them to remove the new leader and follow him before they too were sold to others. They locked out Wollaston’s appointed leader, leaving Morton in command of the colony, which he renamed Merrymount.