2.  The New England colonies
granted lands to men who
banded together as a corporate
group to found a town.
 To make farms, the colonists had
to cut clearings in the forest,
chop firewood, erect fences,
build barns and houses, plow
and plant fields, harvest crops,
and construct mills—all from
scratch by hand labor.
 The New England farm family
also tended a modest but critical
herb of livestock—commonly
two oxen, five other cattle, a
horse, two sheep, and six pigs.

3.  During the late 1630s, New England
thrived primarily from the regular
infusion of newcomers, who brought
currency and other capital and
consumed, at enhanced prices, the
crops produced by the first-comers.
 By developing the fishing trade, the
Puritans rescued the region’s economy,
but at the cost of accepting the
presence, albeit limited, of the sort of
rowdy and defiant folk whom they had
hoped to leave behind in England.
 Although important to the New
England economy, the codfish never
dominated the region in quite the way
that tobacco determined prosperity or
ruin in the Chesapeake.
 Shipbuilding was a powerful engine of
economic development and
diversification.