The pursuit of permanence: regulating land for socio-economic stability in a colonial Massachusetts town

This paper first reviews how England’s middle-class Puritans developed various anxieties regarding their socioeconomic security in the emerging capitalist economy of early modern England. It then investigates three local land practices developed by Puritan colonists in New England to better secure their status in the New World, as revealed in a survey of town proceedings from Watertown, Massachusetts, from 1634 through 1773. These were restricting access to landownership, ‘warning out’ poor outsiders beyond town bounds, and managing land use. These practices enabled the middle-class, small-scale property owners who dominated local government in colonial Watertown to preserve the utility of land assets for future generations, manage the tax burden they associated with poor relief, and prevent conflicts arising among users of private and shared property. In doing so they maintained their households’ status in keeping with their notions of material and spiritual well-being. The paper aligns these practices with later local land practices, including restrictive covenants and zoning, that middle-class communities have used to manage the particular pressures they face in the development of capitalist economies.