MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY When English emigrant William Lane, the
patriarch of Aaron G. Lane's family in America, arrived in
Boston in the mid-17th Century, the town had changed
considerably from the time it was the Indian village of Shawmut.
The wigwams, huts and hovels in which the English had lived 30
years earlier had been replaced, according to a contemporary
description, by "buildings beautifull and large...orderly placed
with comly streets." Throughout Massachusetts Bay Colony
stretches of wilderness had given way to gardens and farmlands.
"There are supposed to be in the Mattachusets Government at this
day," wrote Edward Johnson in about 1650, "neer a thousand acres
of land planted for Orchards and Gardens, there being, as is
supposed in this Colony, about fifteen thousand acres in
tillage, and of cattel about twelve thousand neat, and about
three thousand sheep." The times were prosperous and the
prospects were good for William to advance his trade as a
cordwainer, or shoemaker, and comfortably suppor