Home                     Return to People Quiz                               Contact Salem Focus at   salemfocus@comcast.net

      Roger Conant  1592-1679

      See photo 16:

      Roger Conant, founder of Salem, Massachusetts, was born in East Budleigh, Devonshire, England. In 1623 Conant came to America, landing

      at Plymouth. He soon became unhappy with the strict Puritan environment there and moved his family north, first to Nantasket and then to Cape Ann.

      The Cape Ann fishing settlement was struggling, so in 1626 Conant persuaded a number of settlers to move south with him to a place called

      Naumkeag, (the fishing place). Naumkeag proved to be more suitable to Conant and his fellow settlers, and he became the unofficial governor.

      In 1628, John Endecott landed in Naumkeag with a charter from King Charles I, and announced that he was the new governor of what would

      henceforth be called the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a region that stretched from below the Charles River to the south, to just above the Merrimack River

      to the north. Soon after Endecott's arrival the name for the little settlement that served as the capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was changed from

      Naumkeag  to Salem.    Click on Roger Conant for more information.