May 1, 2026
Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry writes more about how it wasn’t all religion in early America – the pious (dour?) Pilgrims objected to the “licentious” festivities at Thomas Morton’s Merrymount. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
Today, I continue my account of Merrymount, currently a part of Quincy, Massachusetts. This area was once the site of a Crown-sponsored colony managed by Thomas Morton, a notable and controversial figure whose progressive style of governing included a continuum of May Day festivities.
Morton erected a maypole and his followers indulged in drinking, dancing, and frolicking with Indian lasses. Their colony prospered, making them a real threat to the competition.
Additionally, Morton traded guns to the Indians for beaver pelts – and included instructions on their usage.
The most prominent men in the other colonies saw him as a defector: William Bradford dubbed Morton the “Lord of Misrule,” Gov. Thomas Dudley described him as “a proud, insolent man,” and Edward Winslow called him “an arrant knave.”
Bradford further compares Merrymount’s parties with the feast of Flora and the Bacchanalians, and labels the maypole an idol, comparing it to the Calf of Horeb.
To recap: In Part 2, Plymouth chose Myles Standish and his men to pursue Morton, and after capture he was sent back to England. The Pilgrims felt confident that they had eliminated their competitor and all his merrymaking. But only for a brief stint…
He’s Back!
Morton returned to New England in August 1629 with Isaac Allerton, a passenger who originally came on the Mayflower and later traveled to London on Plymouth’s financial business. Allerton made Morton his private secretary.
William Bradford in Of Plimoth Plantation writes the following:
“Mr. Allerton gave them great and just offense in bringing over this year, for base gain, that unworthy man, and instrument of mischief, Morton, who was sent home but the year before for his misdemeanors. He not only brought him over, but to the town (as it were to nose them), and lodged him at his own house, and for a while used him as a scribe to doe his business.”
Morton soon returned to his nest at the Merrymount colony. This time he drew the attention of a new adversary: one Mr. John Endicott, the first governor of Massachusetts. Morton referred to him as “that great swelling fellow, Captain Littleworth.”
According to New England author and historian Edward Rowe Snow, who published an account of Thomas Morton in his newspaper column “Sea and Shore,” Morton’s Merrymount fell under the jurisdiction of the Puritan fold, and with the backing of the Pilgrims the authorities ordered another raid to shut Merrymount down. Morton was arrested.
Snow writes:
Later Morton was tried. At the trial Standish asked that Morton be hanged, but he was sent back to England instead. As is not generally known, Morton didn’t stay in England, but returned to New England early the next year as Allerton’s secretary. He was actually lodged in Plymouth for a time, before returning to Merrymount and his Plymouth-provoking faults: maypole dances, Indian maidens, firewater, and firearms.
The Massachusetts grant included Merrymount, thus allowing Gov. John Endicott to command Morton to appear before him at Naumkeag [Salem], where the governor offered him a partnership in the fur trade. But Morton refused, feeling that he could do better alone. It was not long before he was outdoing in volume seven to one the fur trade of the other Englishmen. This was because he traded firearms and liquor, both forbidden, with the Indians for their furs.
The desperate Pilgrims called upon Endicott for assistance, and soon Endicott acted. Merrymount was burned down, the maypole removed, all Morton’s goods confiscated, and the name of the area changed to Mount Dagon.
Morton was tried at Naumkeag for harming the Indians and taking away their friendship [that claim was not made by the Indians working with Morton]. Sentenced to the bilboes [7 September 1630], he was freed and allegedly sent back to England. Actually, he never arrived there, sailing north to Richmond’s Island, Maine, where he lived for some time in the year 1631.
He allied himself with Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and wrote his satire, New English Canaan. Although many historians dismiss the volume as worthless, this is a mistake as there is much truth written into its pages.
Note: Over the last 20 years Morton’s account of the Indians in New English Canaan has been considered better than most colonial writers, and his work remains extremely valuable for those researching New England’s earliest inhabitants.
Bradford writes the following regarding Endicott’s dismantling of Morton’s fur colony:
“[Endicott] who, visiting those parts, caused that Maypolle to be cutt downe, and rebuked them for their profannes, and admonished them to looke ther should be better walking; so they now, or others, changed the name of their place againe, and called it Mounte-Dagon.”
According to accounts, Endicott gathered up his men, headed by Captain Richard Davenport, and raided the land of good cheer and “rebuked them for their profannes,” chopping down the “Calf of Horeb” and renaming the fairy kingdom “Mount Dagon.”
Besides Capt. Davenport, one other purported to be present for Endicott’s bust of Morton and Merrymount was Captain Peter “the Pioneer” Palfrey, who was referenced in Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales story, “The May-Pole of Merry Mount.” He came on the ship Abigail with the “Dorchester” Company and was one of the original Planters under Governor Roger Conant.
Morton and Merrymount Celebrated
Later generations celebrated Thomas Morton and Merrymount’s spirit of fun. On May Day 1919 a large crowd gathered in Merrymount Park.
Here is a photo from 1930 of the Merrymount revels in a field in Quincy, including portrayals of Thomas Morton, a group of cavaliers, Robin Hood, clowns, and Indians. They set up a maypole and danced around it.
This photo from May 1955 features the chorus of Pilgrims in the Eastman School’s production of Merry Mount, clad in dour historical garb. The opera Merry Mount captured vividly the tensions between the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the revelers of Merrymount.
A 2008 May Day celebration at Merrymount reenacted Morton’s pastime of dancing around the maypole.
In 2025 a colorful monument of Thomas Morton was exhibited in Boston by the New Red Order.
More to come…
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Note on the header image: Mayday at Merrymount. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
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