Endecott or Endicott, John [key], c.1588–1665, one of the founders of Massachusetts Bay colony, b. England. He led the first group of Puritan colonists to Massachusetts Bay in 1628 and was the first governor (1629–30) of the colony at Salem. Endecott remained important in public affairs after John Winthrop established the colony's center at Boston, serving as governor again a number of times (1644, 1649, 1651–53, 1655–64). As a military leader, he so mismanaged an expedition (1636) against a group of Native Americans that he helped bring on the Pequot War. One of the sternest of the Puritan fathers, he was zealous in persecuting the Quakers.
See biography by L. S. Mayo (1936, repr. 1971).
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