Fk -- Some good points:
Winthrop's cronies in addition to being sincerely religious -- were some of the best educated, cultured and entrepreneurial although not rich folks, to found colonies in the New World
As a result :
- 1) and since they were a corporate body acting for themselves -- they didn't have to deal with fat-cats with large land grants -- everyone essentially could be a homesteader / farmer striking out to plant their own land -- which they promptly decided to do
- 2) believing in a theocracy and an educated populace they immediately established public schools and founded a college to train ministers and schoolmasters
- 3) as soon as a group of farmers had enough neighbors to hire a minister and a schoolmaster -- they could petition to the Great and General Court [i.e. the Legislature] to become a town -- thereby governing themselves -- which they promptly did as soon as they could
Thus within a few decades Eastern Massachusetts was divided into independent towns -- some of which later grew into cities -- interconnected with roads
For example the Town of Lexington was first settled by people from Cambridge circa 1642 but remained a part of Cambridge until it was incorporated as a parish, called Cambridge Farms, in 1691 with its own church and minister and itinerant school master. However it was too small to be totally independent until 1713 when it was incorporated as a separate town.
Lexington was connected to the centers of other like towns settled in the same period by paths that later became major streets:
- center to center reciprocally named:
- Woburn [1640],
- Waltham [1634],
- Bedford [1640],
- other important roads connected Lexington:
- Mass Ave in Lexington to Concord [1634 settled and incorporated] via Lincoln [1650]
- Mass Ave to Cambridge and ultimately Boston via Arlington [1635 part of Cambridge until 1807] -- the route Revere took in 1775
- Watertown [1630 -- same year settled and incorporated as Boston] via Belmont [1636 though not incorporated as an independent town until 1859]
In any rate with 50 years of the settlement on Boston Harbor -- you had to go a surprising way out [Littleton @ I-495 & Rt-2 in 1686] to find any land that wasn't settled and on the way to being incorporated
While there were trades, spin-outs and acquisitions between the towns as late as the early 20th C -- most of the map as we know it was established by the time of the Civil War
Railroads, trolley lines and highways just followed the Colonial era routes and insured Greater Boston's uniquely New England metropolitan structure which in turn in the 20th C led to the MDC, MBTA, etc.
