John White: Dorchester’s American Pioneer

Dorset clergyman, John White (1575-1648) did as much as any person to set up the colony of Massachusetts leading eventually to the establishment of the United States of America. He was Rector of Holy Trinity and St Peter’s Churches in Dorchester, England from 1606-1648. For organising and encouraging emigration to the New World, John White has been described as the Founder of Massachusetts. Yet he never visited the new colony. He was a puritan at a time when there was much religious persecution in England.

His first colonial project, the Dorchester Company failed but his second involving the forming of the New England Company was more successful. In March 1830, the Mary and John set sail from Plymouth for the New World with 140. Passengers on board. Upon landing after a ten week crossing the settlement of Dorchester, Massachusetts was founded. Many were from Dorset, Devon and Somerset. Weeks later other ships follows and the Great Migration began.

John White was involved in a group which had taken over the English Dorchester after a great fire. They set up a system to take care of the town’s sick and needy financed by the profits from a brewery. This income also funded a hospital and the education of poor children - boys but not girls in keeping with the ways of the time.

There is a story that the Devil once appeared in the Reverend John White’s bedroom. Apparently, he waited a long while and then remarked:

‘If thou hath nothing else to do, then I have.’

The clergyman turned over and went to sleep.

John White died on 21st July 1648 and was buried in St Peter’s Church in Dorchester. In June 1998, 29 descendants of the pioneers who sailed on the Mary and John to make a fresh start in Massachusetts came back to Dorset. They arrived to attend a Dorset & the New World Seminar organised at Lyme Regis by the Somerset & Dorset Family History Society.

(Source: Fire from Heaven by David Underwood & Dorchester’s New World by David Cuckson.)

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