Massachusetts

SOME ALGONQUIAN TRIBES inhabited the area now known as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts before the Pilgrim Fathers arrived in 1620. The Puritans followed them, establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Gradually, more settlers arrived and Massachusetts became a single colony in 1692. Involved in the American Revolutionary War, it was one of the original states, and had an elected governor beginning in the 17th century, and an elected House of Representatives before Independence.

After Independence, the first elected governor of Massachusetts was John Hancock, who was the first president of the Second Continental Congress, and the first person to sign the U.S. Declaration of Independence. He was popular, and his election was straightforward. However, in 1785, he resigned as governor with Thomas Cushing becoming the acting governor until James Bowdoin was elected. During his governorship, Bowdoin called up the militia to end Shays' Rebellion, and as a result was defeated when he stood for re-election in 1787. He lost to Hancock, who returned as governor until his death in 1793. Samuel Adams completed Hancock's unexpired term, and then was elected in his own right, serving two terms until 1797, when Increase Sumner was elected as governor.

Sumner was the first governor with a political affiliation, being a member of the Federalist Party. In 1800, Caleb Strong, another Federalist, was elected as governor, [Page 397]and, in 1806, James Sullivan, a Democratic-Republican was elected governor. Over the next 30 years, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans battled for the position of governor.

Two governors during that period came to dominate political life in Massachusetts. John Brooks from the Federalist Party was elected in 1816, holding office until 1823; and Levi Lincoln, Jr., was elected in 1825, holding office until 1834, making him the governor with the longest consecutive term in the history of Massachusetts. (Michael Dukakis served two separate terms in the 1970s and 1980s.) Levi Lincoln was a distant relative of Abraham Lincoln, and was a member of the Democratic-Republican Party. His brother, Enoch Lincoln, was governor of Maine 1827–29; they were the first two brothers to hold office simultaneously.

In 1834, John Davis of the Whig Party became governor and then was elected as an Anti-Jacksonian to the U.S. Senate, with Edward Everett being elected to replace him. Everett, a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, went on to be a member of the National Republican Party, the Whig Party, and then the Republican Party, before finally joining the Constitutional Union of John Bell.

Governor Deval Patrick is the first African-American governor of Massachusetts, and the second in the United States.