This little circumstance fixed the original
settlement on the marsh now known as Dorchester Neck.
The honor of the name Dorchester appears to belong to Rev. John White,
minister of a town of the same name in the mother country, who planned
and encouraged the exodus to America. But the hardy little band of
exiles who received the title from old Cutshumaquin, the successor of
Chickatabat, little knew what their wild territory was destined to
become in the course of a hundred years. They were loyal subjects of the
English throne, building their log cabins and rude meeting-house on
Allen's Plain under protection of a charter from King Charles; there
they hoped to found a permanent town, where the worship of God should be
maintained in accordance with the dictates of the Puritan conscience,
without interference of churchman, Roman Catholic, Baptist, or Quaker.
There was room in the unexplored forests to the south for pasturage and
for the overflow, whenever, as Cotton Mather said when the whole state
contained less than six thousand white inhabitants, "Massachusetts
should be like a hive overstocked with bees.
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