Winthrop (John) is born in Suffolk, England.

John Winthrop graduates from Trinity College, becomes a lawyer, and then leader of the Massachusetts Bay Company expedition, which lands initially in today’s Salem, settles briefly in Charlestown, and finally in Boston in 1630.* Winthrop lives first near today’s 53 State Street (then Great Street), serves 12 terms as governor between 1629 and 1649. He dies in Boston on March 26, 1649, and is buried in King’s Chapel Burying Ground. Samuel Adams Drake subsequently writes, “The life of Winthrop is the life of the Colony.” Josiah Quincy II later writes, “Had Boston like Rome a consecrated calendar, there is no name better entitled than that of Winthrop to be registered as its patron saint.”