ABOUT

The Town of Winthrop is a city in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 17,497 at the 2010 census.

History
Winthrop was settled in 1630 by English Puritan colonists as Pullen Poynt (Pulling Point), so named because the tides made hard pulling for boatmen. The present town is named after John Winthrop (1587–1649), second governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and an English Puritan leader. On April 8, 1630, Winthrop departed from the Isle of Wight, England on the ship Arbella, arriving in Salem in June where he was met byJohn Endecott, the first governor of the colony. John Winthrop served as governor for twelve of the colony's first twenty years of existence. It was he who decided to base the colony at the Shawmut Peninsula, where he and other colonists founded what is now the City of Boston. Originally part of an area called Winnisimmet by the native Massachusett tribe, Pullen Poynt was annexed by the Town of Boston in 1632 and was used as a grazing area. In 1637, it was divided into fifteen parcels of land that were given by Governor Winthrop to prominent men in Boston with the stipulation that each must erect a building on his land within two years. Few, if any, of these men ever lived on these parcels of land, but their farms prospered. One of these early houses, the Deane Winthrop House, was the home of Governor Winthrop’s youngest son, Deane Winthrop, who lived there until his death in 1704. This house is still standing and is also the oldest continually occupied home in the United States. Although occupied, it is also open to the public at select times. The house is maintained by the Winthrop Improvement and Historical Association.