Puritans. They’re the harsh unrelenting religious prudes that you might think would make for a long and terribly boring story. And normally I’d agree with you but that’s only when they cast themselves as the main characters like we have been taught in our history books. When they’re playing the role of evil villains the story gets way more interesting.
Please, sit down and join me as I bring you on an epic trip through a long-forgotten history and introduce you to one of the most eccentric and progressive men to ever set foot in America. And I’ll show you his baby – a little utopia and bubble of refuge for anyone and everyone who has ever felt different. There will be workers’ uprisings, free spirits, free love, alcohol, Pagan orgies, and the Maypole that brought it all down.
We’ll begin our story during the second wave of white settlers to come to New England after their Puritan brethren. These people were far from religious extremists, in fact they tended to be people on the run from something, usually the law. But sometimes just society itself. Criminals. Misfits. Miscreants. Heathens. Atheists. It was the beginning of the great melting pot much to the Puritans horror and disapproval.
In this delightful bunch of rogues there was also some free spirits, shall we say. One of these was a man named Thomas Morton. He was not a criminal, but he was an all-around super decent guy even by today’s standards! He was born in 1579 to the gentry of England where he grew up in a somewhat unusual manner. He wasn’t exactly a Puritan himself – instead he was raised with a great deal of Pagan influences. His mind was further broadened when he went to University. Here he didn’t just learn about English law he also was exposed to the Libertine lifestyle which may have influenced his exceptionally progressive attitude in matters of sexual opinion.
Morton ended up in the colonies on a trading venture in 1624 with his associate at the time Captain Wollaston. With them were thirty young men who were to serve as Wollaston’s indentured servants. They settled on a small patch of land they were given by the local Algonquin tribe and immediately began a successful trade with the indigenous people that was probably made possible at least in part to his exceptionally fond attitude towards them, stating that they were more civilized and humanitarian than their intolerant European neighbors.
He was fiercely critical of the Puritan settlers who lived nearby and didn’t make any friends among them. If anything, his mere existence seemed to ruffle their feathers and he wasn’t one to back down even going so far as to incite a sort of rebellion to overthrow his associate Wollaston. It wasn’t unmerited but it was extraordinary for the time as the cause of the feud was the fact that Wollaston was selling his indentured servants into permanent slavery whenever he needed the cash. In response to this Morton gathered the remaining indentured servants and convinced them that their strength was in their numbers and all they had to do to achieve their well-earned freedom was to rebel against Wollaston’s authority. This resulted in Wollaston fleeing the country for his life and the remaining men starting their own little colony which would eventually be known as Merrymount.
Morton may have been from the gentry and may have been the one to have started this initial village, but he did not claim any particular leadership, instead calling himself Mine Host and treating the others as equals. Here he celebrated life to its fullest erecting a very Pagan Maypole in the center, hosting great festivals, and indulging in far more alcohol consumption than his Puritan neighbors felt was proper.
Trade boomed with the surrounding tribes and the colony grew exponentionally as other Puritan separatists wandered into town. However, there was a still a pretty big gender gap with the colony being comprised mostly, if not completely, of men. To ease this imbalance he encouraged interracial marriage between the settlers and native women which was a practice so taboo it was probably what started his downfall. In addition to the interracial marriages, he also allowed gay couples to form and live their life in flagrant disregard of gender norms.
If you’re wondering why the other settlers weren’t executing the gay couples (as was law at the time) it’s likely because the colonies were in dire need of more people to settle the area and killing anyone off was considered a great loss of a valuable asset. In addition to this they may have reasoned that some day these same men could still produce children if reformed through punishment.
But as shocking as all this was it was allowed to continue for several years by the surrounding Puritan population even though it was frequently in complete and utter opposition of the laws at the time. Suffice to say it was good for business and growing more popular by the day becoming one of the most prosperous colonies in New England and the most rapidly growing one by population. But relations with the indigenous peoples would eventually be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Morton deeply believed in full cooperation with local tribes to benefit both ways of life. He even brought them salt and taught them how to preserve meat so that they may settle if they chose to – otherwise their way of life had been semi-nomadic by nature. But even this was uncomfortably given the blind eye until he was found teaching the natives how to use guns and selling them arms. He’d gone from an eccentric annoyance to a danger to the rest of the colonies and they came down hard on him. They went from grumbling about wild orgies to legally threatening him.
On the second day of Mayday festivities in 1628 the Puritan militia stormed the grounds, captured Morton, and tried him for selling guns to the indigenous population. Because he was gentry and way too well connected, they didn’t execute him, instead they exiled him to an uninhabited island off of New Hampshire where they hoped he’d starve to death before a ship would be sent for him to bring him back to England. However, this is not what happened. As it turns out his life philosophy of not being a dick to people who didn’t look like him really paid off. The indigenous population near the island made sure he was properly fed until that ship really did show up.
He spent three years in an English prison before clawing his way back to the colonies. Sadly, on his arrival, he found his little slice of Utopia had been more or less destroyed. The inhabitants were scattered by increasing harassment and there wasn’t much left. When famine hit in the Winter of 1629 neighboring New Salem raided Merrymount’s corn supply and burned any remaining buildings and the offending Pagan Maypole to the ground. Morton himself was arrested again for being a royalist and a separatist and imprisoned in Boston. After this he fled to Maine where he spent the rest of his life until he died at the age of 71, willfully forgotten.
And that’s where the story remained, as a weird footnote that no one except the most ardent historians knew anything about, until the three books he had written about his experiences were republished in 2013 and we all got to hear his side of the story and reclaim our rightful history of possibly the greatest social experiment ever in colonialist America.
