John Endecott was born in Devon, England, in 1588. Endecott, a Puritan, became interested in the colonization of the New World through the influence of the Reverend John White in England. In 1623, White, also a Puritan, organized a group of investors and adventurers who were interested in forming a company that would send people to New England to form a trading settlement there. The company became known as the Dorchester Company, named for the English town where the company was founded. White had gotten the investors together, in part, because of a pamphlet he had written in which he urged “men of wealth, social influence, and education to found a colony in New England.”

    In 1628, Salem founder Roger Conant and his fellow settlers in Naumkeag, (as Salem was originally known), learned that the Dorchester Company had been dissolved because it was unprofitable. Conant also learned that a man named John Endecott and five other men of means from the Dorchester, England, area had applied for a charter from the English government. They intended to take over the defunct Dorchester Company. The charter was granted to a new company called the New England Company. The charter created the Massachusetts Bay Company, which included all land between the three miles north of the Merrimack River and three miles south of the Charles River.

    Originally the Salem colony had been founded primarily for economic reasons. England needed a colony in New England that would supply fish, lumber and furs and other commodities. When Endecott took over as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, he changed the emphasis from trade to religion, and the little settlement became the bastion of Puritan thinking in the Americas.

     When Endecott arrived at Naumkeag, Roger Conant handed over the leadership of the colony without contesting the change and pledged his support to the new governor. Endecott appreciated this cooperation and went out of his way to accommodate the “Old Planters,” as the first settlers at Naumkeag were called. This peaceful handover of authority began America’s four-century tradition of nonviolent leadership transitions.

    Almost immediately Endecott’s leadership was tested. The winter of 1628-29 was far more severe than the previous mild autumn had augured. Certainly more severe than any the settlers had experienced back in England. On top of the brutal winter weather, the colonists had to contend with a terrible sickness. The disease had started late in the preceding summer and gained momentum in the fall. Eventually most of the settlers came down with it. A few died, and it was clear to Endecott that more would die if something wasn’t done. Endecott had heard of the remarkable healing powers of a Dr. Samuel Fuller at New Plymouth (eventually shortened to Plymouth), where the Mayflower had landed eight years earlier. Endecott appealed to Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony, and Bradford sent the doctor without delay. Almost immediately Fuller’s efforts made a difference.

     The arrival of Samuel Fuller in Salem was the beginning of the transformation of Salem into the first Puritan colony in America. What had started out as a commercial trading and fishing venture had slowly been transformed into an exemplary Puritan outpost. Fuller, a charismatic man of great persuasive skill, was also deeply religious. Cotton Mather proclaimed him a paragon of Puritan virtue.

    Endecott earned a reputation as a fair, but strict and occasionally stern leader, enforcing the Puritan religious beliefs and punishing those he believed to be offenders. At one point he led a brutal expedition against Indians in retribution for their killing of a colonial trader. Many believe that this savage expedition led to King Phillip’s War. Endecott was also known for his harsh treatment of Quakers.

     The investors in the colony came to view Salem as a religious refuge for their beliefs.

     Back in England, a new group led by John Winthrop, also born in 1588, agreed to buy out the stock of the New England Company. Winthrop set sail with a thousand other intrepid souls wishing to settle in the nascent colony and landed in Salem in 1630. Upon Winthrop’s arrival in Salem, Endecott relinquished control of the colony.  Endecott continued to serve the colony as a public servant for many more years. In addition to his years as governor from 1628 through 1630, he also served in that office in 1644, 49, 51-55 and 65.□