The emigrants
from Plymouth protested, but were finally glad to accept a compromise,
though, as Bradford remarks, "the unkindness was not soon forgotten."
The Massachusetts settlers held on to fifteen-sixteenths of the land,
while they magnanimously conceded to the Plymouth people
one-sixteenth, in addition to their block-houses.[48]

The emigration in the summer of 1635 was preliminary to a much larger
exodus in the fall. In October a company of about sixty men, women,
and children, driving before them their cows, horses, and swine, set
out by land and reached the Connecticut "after a tedious and difficult
journey";[49] but the winter set in very early, and the vessels which
were to bring their provisions by water not appearing, they were
forced to leave their settlement for fear of famine. They were
fortunate to find a ship frozen up in the river, which they freed from
the ice and used to return to Boston. The other settlers who remained
upon the river suffered very much, and were finally reduced to the
necessity of eating acorns and ground-nuts, which they dug out of the
snow. A great number of the cattle perished, and the Dorchester
Company "lost near L2000 worth."[50]

These calamities were soon forgotten; and as soon as the first flowers
of spring suggested the end of the dreary winter season, the Newtown
people prepared to move. Selling their lands on the Charles River to
the congregation of Rev. Thomas Shepard, the whole body, in June,
1636, emigrated through the green woods, musical with birds and bright
with flowers, under the leadership of their two eminent ministers,
Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone.[51] Among the lay members of the
community were Stephen Hart, Thomas Bull, and Richard Lord.[52] A
little later the churches of Dorchester and Watertown completed their
removal, while a settlement was made by emigrants from Roxbury under
William Pynchon at Agawam, afterwards Springfield, just north of the
boundary between Massachusetts and Connecticut.[53]

At the beginning of the winter of 1636-1637 about eight hundred people
were established in three townships below Springfield. These townships
were first called after the towns from which their inhabitants
removed--Newtown, Watertown, and Dorchester; but in February, 1637,
their names were changed to Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor. The
settlements well illustrate the general type of New England
colonization. The emigration from Massachusetts was not of