Massachusetts

Pilgrims and Puritans

Massachusetts was one of the first English colonies in North America. The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620, and ten years later Puritan colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Company founded Boston. The two colonies were united in 1691. Massachusetts was at the heart of the American Revolution: the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party and the first battles of the war, at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, all happened there. In 1780 Massachusetts adopted a constitution drafted largely by John Adams, which is still in force, the oldest written constitution in use anywhere in the world. On February 6, 1788, Massachusetts ratified the US Constitution, the sixth state to do so.

The name

Massachusetts is named for the Massachusett people, an Algonquian-speaking tribe who lived around the Great Blue Hill, south of Boston. The Secretary of the Commonwealth gives the usual reading of their name as roughly “at or about the great hill,” though other explanations have been offered over the centuries.

The Bay State

Massachusetts is officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a term John Adams chose for the 1780 constitution. Its best-known nickname, the Bay State, recalls the colonial Massachusetts Bay Colony; from 1776 to 1780 the state’s official name was the State of Massachusetts Bay. No law names the nickname, but a 1990 law makes “Bay Staters” the official name for residents. Older nicknames include the Old Colony State, the Puritan State and the Baked Bean State.

The state motto is Latin: Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem, “By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty,” adopted in 1775.

Boston and its golden dome

Boston has been the capital since its founding in 1630, except for about 18 months in 1775 and 1776, when the British occupied the city and the government met in Watertown. Since 1798 the government has worked in Charles Bulfinch’s State House on Beacon Hill, whose dome was sheathed in copper by Paul Revere’s company and is now covered in gold leaf. The capital page tells the story.

A very long list of symbols

Massachusetts has about 65 official symbols, one of the longest lists in the country, and schoolchildren proposed many of them. Some are expected: the mayflower is the state flower, the black-capped chickadee the state bird and the American elm the state tree, chosen because George Washington took command of the Continental Army under an elm in Cambridge. The Atlantic cod, the fish that built New England’s economy, is the state fish, and a carved wooden cod, the “Sacred Cod,” hangs in the House chamber. Others are more surprising: an official state dinosaur, a state muffin, a state donut, a state cookie, a state children’s book, Make Way for Ducklings, an official groundhog and two official sports, basketball and volleyball, both invented in Massachusetts. See every symbol on the Massachusetts symbols page.

The flag shows the state coat of arms on white. A state commission has been considering a new flag and seal since 2021, but no change has been made.

Land and people

Massachusetts covers 10,554 square miles, 44th among the states, and had about 7.15 million residents in 2025, 16th in the country and third in population density. It borders New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island, and its Atlantic coast includes Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Boston, with about 673,000 people, is the largest city, followed by Worcester, Springfield, Cambridge and Lowell.