ABSTRACT
Though sometimes troubled, family relations in the New England colonies (Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth Colony, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire) came closest to replicating the conditions found back in England. If anything, the region’s town fathers spent even more time observing and ordering families and households than had authorities in the old country. Governance in these colonies was profoundly influenced, at least in the first generation or two, by the goals of radical Protestant reformers sometimes known by the term PURITANS.
