Population, rank |
1650 (8 colonies) |
1700 (12 colonies) |
1750 (13 colonies) |
1780 (13 colonies) |
||||
Maine |
NA |
|
NA |
|
NA |
|
49,100 |
|
New Hampshire |
1,300 |
6th |
5,000 |
11th |
27,500 |
12th |
87,800 |
10th |
Vermont |
NA |
|
NA |
|
NA |
|
47,600 |
|
Massachusetts |
15,600 |
2nd |
55,900 |
2nd |
188,000 |
2nd |
268,600 |
3rd |
Rhode Island |
800 |
7th |
5,900 |
9th |
33,200 |
10th |
52,900 |
12th |
Connecticut |
4,100 |
4th |
26,000 |
4th |
111,300 |
5th |
206,700 |
7th |
Key events that shaped law and society:
| Cotton Mather, prominent Puritan leader (ca. 1700) - courtesy Wikipedia “While in substance the Common Law was preserved, we happily lost a great mass of antiquated and useless rubbish, and gained in its stead a course of practice of admirable simplicity.” – Justice __, in ___ (N.H. 1855) “[T]hat low craft and cunning so incident to the People of [New England] …is so interwoven in their Constitutions that all their art cannot disguise it from the World, though many of them under the sanctified garb of Religion, have endeavored to impose themselves on the World for honest men.” – Lewis Morris (New York) |