Daily Bread: Food and Spirituality in Early Boston

The physical hardships of creating the Massachusetts Bay Colony were extreme for unprepared English colonists, most of whom were from urban areas. Hunger was a constant part of their lives, and in this crucible of suffering the colony was transformed. Massachusetts became a place where people deliberately sought transformation and redemption by a powerful combination of physical suffering and pure religion. As conditions improved, the Puritans of the colony found new ways to recreate the intensity of those early years; one was requiring prospective a church member to relate a convincing story of soul-searching, trial, error, and woe in conversion narratives before being allowed to partake in the most important meal of all, the Lord’s Supper.

Lori Stokes received her Ph.D. from Stony Brook University. She studies the founding decades of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, focusing on the 1630s and ’40s when the forms of church and state were put in place that would shape Massachusetts and American history for centuries to come.