National Massachusetts Day Date in the current year: August 17, 2025

Officially known as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts is a state in New England bordered by Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Gulf of Maine. Although it is the sixth-smallest state by land area, Massachusetts is the most populous state in New England and the 16th-most populous state overall. It ranks behind only New Jersey and Rhode Island in terms of population density.

The state was named after the Indigenous Massachusett people, whose name can be roughly translated as “at the great hill”, referring to the Blue Hills overlooking Boston Harbor. The Massachusett and other Algonquian peoples, including the Mahican, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Pocomtuc, and Wampanoag, were the region’s original inhabitants pre-colonization. In the late 1610s, approximately 90% of the Native Americans living in Massachusetts Bay were killed by an infectious disease, most likely smallpox, brought by early European colonists.

The first permanent English colony in Massachusetts (and the third in the Americas, after Jamestown and Newfoundland) was Plymouth Colony. It was founded in 1620 by Brownists who arrived on the Mayflower. These first settlers became known as the Pilgrims or the Pilgrim Fathers. Their first year in the New World was extremely difficult, but the Wampanoag people helped them survive. This resulted in the first Thanksgiving Day celebration.

In 1628, King Charles I issued the Massachusetts Bay Company Charter, officially establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colony was primarily inhabited by Puritans who had come to the New World seeking religious freedom.

In 1691, King William III and Queen Mary II merged several British colonies in New England to create the Province of Massachusetts Bay. This was one of the original Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. The new province encompassed present-day Massachusetts (including Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket), Maine, parts of New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as small portions of the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Quebec.

During the American Revolution, Massachusetts was the main center of the independence movement. Notable revolutionary events that took place there include the Boston Massacre (1770), the Boston Tea Party (1773), the Battles of Lexington and Concord (1775), which sparked the American Revolutionary War, the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775), and the Siege of Boston (1775–1776). John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers and the second U.S. president, was a Massachusetts native.

In September 1787, four years after the Revolutionary War ended, the U.S. Constitution was completed and sent to the state legislatures for ratification. Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the Constitution on February 6, 1788.