Boston

Boston is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It serves as the cultural and financial center of New England, a region of the Northeastern United States. Boston has an area of 48.4 sq mi (125 km²) and a population of 675,647 as of the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in the Northeastern United States after New York City and Philadelphia. The larger Greater Boston metropolitan statistical area had a population of 4.9 million in 2023, making it the largest metropolitan area in New England and the eleventh-largest in the United States.

Boston was founded on Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by English Puritan settlers, who named the city after the market town of Boston, Lincolnshire in England. During the American Revolution and Revolutionary War, Boston was home to several seminal events, including the Boston Massacre (1770), the Boston Tea Party (1773), Paul Revere's midnight ride (1775), the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775), and the Siege of Boston (1775–1776).

Following American independence from Great Britain, Boston played an important national role as a port, manufacturing hub, and education and culture center, and the city expanded significantly beyond the original peninsula by filling in land and annexing neighboring towns. Boston's many firsts include the nation's first public park (Boston Common, 1634), the first public school (Boston Latin School, 1635), and the first subway system (Tremont Street subway, 1897).

Boston later emerged as a global leader in higher education and research and is the largest biotechnology hub in the world as of 2023. The city is a national leader in scientific research, law, medicine, engineering, and business. With nearly 5,000 startup companies, the city is considered a global pioneer in innovation, entrepreneurship, and artificial intelligence. Boston's economy is led by finance, professional and business services, information technology, and government. Boston households provide the highest average rate of philanthropy in the nation as of 2013, and the city's businesses and institutions rank among the top in the nation for environmental sustainability and new investment.

Isaac Johnson—in one of his last official acts as leader of the Charlestown community before his death on September 30, 1630—named the new settlement across the river "Boston" after Johnson's hometown of Boston, Lincolnshire, from where he, his wife (namesake of the Arbella), and John Cotton (grandfather of Cotton Mather) emigrated. The name of the English town derives from its patron saint, St. Botolph, in whose church Cotton served as the rector until he and Johnson emigrated to New England. In early sources, Lincolnshire's Boston was known as "St. Botolph's town", which was later abbreviated as "Boston". Before this renaming, the settlement on the peninsula was known as "Shawmut" by William Blaxton and "Tremontaine" by the Puritan settlers he invited.

Prior to European colonization, the region surrounding present-day Boston was inhabited by the Massachusett people who established small, seasonal communities in present-day Boston. In 1630, settlers led by John Winthrop arrived, and found Shawmut Peninsula nearly empty of Native people. Most had died of European diseases borne by earlier settlers and traders. Archaeological excavations have unearthed one of the oldest fishweirs in New England, located on Boylston Street, which Native people constructed as early as 7,000 years before European arrival in the Western Hemisphere.

The first European to live in what would become Boston was a University of Cambridge-educated Anglican cleric named William Blaxton. He was most directly responsible for the foundation of Boston by Puritan colonists in 1630, after Blaxton invited one of their leaders, Isaac Johnson, to cross Back Bay from the failing colony of Charlestown and share the peninsula with him. In September 1630 Puritans made the crossing to present-day Boston.

Puritan influence on Boston began even before the settlement was founded with the 1629 Cambridge Agreement, which was created the Massachusetts Bay Colony and signed by the colony's first governor, John Winthrop. Puritan ethics and their focus on education also influenced the city's early history. In 1635, America's first public school, Boston Latin School, was founded in Boston.