The Other States of America: History Podcast

The New Haven colony, originally created to be the most puritanical of puritan colonies, now faces internal and external threats which will wear away the optimism of God's elect.

While England devolves into Civil War, the four Puritan Colonies of New England form a Confederation, leaning on one another for a little order in a chaotic world. Together the United Colonies will have to contend with Roger William's Rhode Island Colony, Sir Ferdinando Gorges' Maine Colony, and the Dutch in New Netherland, all while navigating Native politics, plots and assassination atte...

Reverend John Davenport and his childhood friend, businessman Theophilus Eaton, lead a wave of the wealthiest and strictest Puritans out of England, unknowingly toward the tail end of the Puritan Exodus. Arriving in Massachusetts they find the colony divided and the "City on a Hill" already tainted with heresy. Davenport and Eaton decide to form their own colony of New Haven out beyond t...

The great Puritan Lords of England buy a readymade colony on the edge of the English world. Rumored to be a last resort refuge for nobles plotting against King Charles I, if everything were to go south, Saybrook was to be a place of peace. Nonetheless, the colony became consumed by the Pequot War. With the outbreak of the English Civil War, Saybrook struggled to find a new purpose as the Puritan L...

In the final episode of our Rhode Island trilogy, Roger Williams seeks a unified colony known as "Providence Plantations in the Narragansett Bay," while William Coddington tries to merge Rhode Island with Massachusetts and later set the Island apart from mainland Providence.

Anne Hutchinson and her allies form a powerful faction in the politics of the early Massachusetts Bay Colony, challenging the old guard. Anne and her Brother-In-Law Reverend John Wheelwright, elevate the conflict into the spiritual realm condemning most of the colonies' clergy to damnation for teaching a "covenant of works." In secret her supporters draft, what we now call, the Ports...

Roger Williams, ill and alone, wanders the winter wilderness of New England until finding Ousamequin of the Wampanoag who offers him shelter. Exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony Williams plans to make the most radical settlement in the New World.

John Wheelwright leads an Exodus of his flock from Lincolnshire to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, only to then condemn the colony and accuse their clergy of being Anti-Antichrists. Banished, he must now search for a new place to settle during the cold winter of 1637.

The English Civil War manifests itself in New England where Royalist Maine is reduced by the creation of Parliamentarian Lygonia, both of which will have to stave off the northern advance of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A three way conflict for legitimacy in a chaotic world.

For most the history of Maine begins with the Missouri Compromise of 1820, however another Maine existed long before. This Maine would be split in two, one half becoming New Hampshire, the other becoming its' forgotten sister colony of New Somersetshire. All the while, the owners of these Colonies, and members of the Council for New England were bent on the destruction of the Massachusetts Bay...

Captain Wollaston creates a small settlement in New England, seemingly to use as a way-station and storage facility for Indentured Servants. Thomas Morton, one of his minor investors, had another plan in mind. Morton's neighbors in the Plymouth Colony will come to know him as, "The Lord of Misrule."

Plymouth castaways, fishermen and farmers, find refuge to the North of the Plymouth Colony, creating small autonomous settlements along the coast. Unknowingly, their assistance to the Dorchester Company would redraw the maps for the Natives and the Old Planters as they laid the foundation for a "City upon a Hill."

Plymouth and the scattered fishing camps to the north owe their tenuous legal existence in the English world to The Council for New England. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, President of the Council, has a grand vision for New England: of feudal estates, worked by sturdy pheasants, worshiping in proper Anglican fashion under a single governor. His Council for New England reserved the right to govern, as gra...

Thomas Weston, the man who financed the Separatists and legitimized their settlement at Plymouth, plans a colony of his own. Without the distractions of family units and religious fanaticism, Weston hopes his colony will return greater profits than the fledging Pilgrims were providing. Success will depend on forging a trade relationship with the Native Massachusetts Tribe, and is counting on the r...

Ousamequin, Paramount Chief of the Wampanoag, leads his people through a period of near desolation, only to live to see the enemy Narragansett threaten to absorb the remainder of his once great confederacy. In 1621 he decides to make allies with strange bedfellows in a gambit to take back control of his world. 

The Popham Colony is abandoned and now the Virginia Company of Plymouth is without a settlement to defend their claims. During this shadowy period of time the English still maintain a presence in Northern Virginia, as they call it, soon to be reimagined as New England by an unsuspecting character you may know from Jamestown fame. Unknowingly, the groundwork is laid by Sir Ferdinando Gorges for a a...

The Popham Colony or Sagadahoc Colony, rather than a historical footnote, was the vanguard of a new colonization model for the English, the result of rights stripped from noble conspirators, and redistributed to new corporate entities. After years of sailors kidnapping natives off the coast of modern day Maine to train as interpreters, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Sir John Popham return them hoping t...

18 years before the Mayflower carried its' famous passengers, Bartholomew Gosnold plans to start a small fishing colony on a small island off the coast of Southern New England. Little known to history, Gosnold's colony surprisingly had a lasting impact on the place names of New England and the foundation of a later colony you may have heard of... 

Who were the Wampanoag in the period immediately preceding contact with Europeans? How did they view themselves and the world around them? In this episode Eric reconstructs the Wampanoag in the time before the Thanksgiving story, Tisquantum, or Plymouth. 

This season will cover the  many forgotten English colonies that became the Middle and New England Colonies we all know and love so well. Rather than serve as missteps and side stories, these ventures shaped the borders, nature and circumstances of the Colonies that would one day declare their independence, beginning yet another state of America. A few topics covered this season: The Wampanoa...

In this episode Eric rambles on about the season, people who reached out and the sources used to put together season two.

The people of New France witness the utter desolation of many of their Native allies, only to find themselves living under the constant siege of the Haudenosaunee. Desperate pleas to New England to start a Holy War against the Iroquois fall on deaf ears as the English leave the French to fend for themselves. Martyrs and Heroines are made, visions and signs of the end times abound.    Ima...

Champlain is dead, but the order he put in place holds New France together. However, the Haudenosaunee have returned armed with guns and determined dominate the fur trade along the St. Lawrence. Montreal is settled by a secret society and a mutilated missionary seeks Martyrdom among the Mohawks... 

In the 17th Century, the mighty Huron Confederacy, or Wendat Confederacy consisted of several Iroquoian speaking nations who held a monopoly on the fur trade from all points North and West headed to New France. Both the French and the Wendat became economically dependent on one another and the acceptance of Jesuit missionaries into the lands of the Confederacy in the 1630's a French precondition t...

The French, for the third time are determined to rebuild Acadia. However, competing titles split Acadia into two, run by rival claimants with powerful wives. Fate seemingly switching favor from one man to another, the outcome of the war is wholly unexpected.