Since the early 17th century, the English migrated to America for a variety of reasons. The promise of treasure, religious tolerance, and plentiful lands, lured gold-seekers, Puritans, Protestants, unemployed farmers, indentured servants, and younger sons (who had fallen victim to laws of primogeniture), to the land mistakenly named the Indies. English migration to the Chesapeake region spread over nearly a century, whereas voyagers to New England arrived within a single decade. One would think that since the English settled both of these regions, both of their societies would develop quite similarly, but one could not be more wrong. The variations of the societies that developed in the Chesapeake region and the New England region occurred because the settlers had different motivations pertaining to their journeys, contrasting family ties, and diverse geological situations.

In 1606, the main attraction to the "New World" was the promise of gold (combined with a...