A New England Puritan woman lived with a constant sense of her role as moral center of her family, helpmate to a Christian husband, and wife to him and Christ. The writings of Margaret Tyndal Winthrop, wife of the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, reveal her acceptance, and even joy, at how this idealized role anchored her life. In her writing, which consists of letters to relatives, the reader discovers her attempts to forge a strong domestic network on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean in the face of lengthy separations and wilderness adventures. In fact many scholars have concluded that her strength and steadiness made her the social center of the early Massachusetts Bay Colony and the religious model that other Puritan wives emulated.

Margaret Tyndal was born in about 1591 at Chelmshey House, a country estate in Great Maplestead, Essex, England. She was the fourth...