Wednesday · November 11, 2026
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American history, reported as it happened
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The events of October 7 · Read the full edition → · More from October 7 →
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A new charter folds Massachusetts and Plymouth into one crown province

Increase Mather asked for the old Puritan charter back; William and Mary gave him a different colony instead.

For two years Massachusetts had governed itself without any valid charter, ever since colonists threw out the despised royal governor Edmund Andros in 1689. On October 7, 1691, William III and Mary II settled the question by issuing a new charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay, merging Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Maine, and other territories into a single royal province. The crown would now appoint the governor; voters would qualify by property, not church membership. Plymouth, which had governed itself for seventy years without ever holding a royal charter, ceased to exist as a separate colony…

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More from October 7
2001

American bombs fall on Afghanistan; Bush says "time is running out"

Air strikes hit Taliban defenses and al-Qaeda camps as U.S. special forces move in to back the Northern Alliance.
1943

Ninety-eight American prisoners are shot on a Wake Island beach

The civilian contractors had survived twenty-two months of occupation; their captors gave no warning before the killing.
1940

A Navy memo floats a plan: push Japan into firing the first shot

Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum sends his superiors eight ways to pressure Tokyo, and admits Washington isn't ready to declare war without one.
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The only British officer on the field is dead within the hour, and his men have nowhere left to run.
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Read the full October 7 edition →Everything that happened on October 7 →
More from Colonial America
1775

Twelve colonies convene in Philadelphia; no army, no treasury, a war already begun

Delegates gather at the Pennsylvania State House three weeks after Lexington and Concord, with no authority from the Crown and no clear path forward.
1775

Allen and Arnold take Ticonderoga; not a shot is fired

83 Green Mountain Boys cross Lake Champlain before dawn and walk out with a British fort's entire stockpile of heavy artillery.
1772

Providence men row out at night and burn HMS Gaspee to the waterline

Eighteen boatloads led by Abraham Whipple and merchant John Brown board the grounded revenue schooner in Narragansett Bay; Lieutenant Duddingston is shot and wounded.
1692

Bridget Bishop is hanged at Salem; the first life taken in the witchcraft trials

The English-born woman, convicted of bewitching five young women, goes to the gallows eight days after the jury returned its verdict.
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