wEssAgUsEnT COLONY

Approximate location of the Wessagusset Colony in Massachusetts
Location of Massachusetts in the United States

Wessagusset Colony (sometimes called the Weston Colony or Weymouth Colony) was a short-lived English trading colony in New England located in present-day Weymouth, Massachusetts. It was settled in August 1622 by between fifty and sixty colonists who were ill-prepared for colonial life. After settling without adequate provisions^[1] and harming relations with local Native Americans,^[2] the colony was dissolved in late March 1623 with surviving colonists joining Plymouth Colony or returning to England. It was the second settlement in Massachusetts, predating the Massachusetts Bay Colony by six years.

Called by historian Charles Francis Adams, Jr. "ill-conceived, "ill-executed, [and] ill-fated",^[3] the short-lived colony is best remembered for the battle (some say massacre)^[4] there between Plymouth troops led by Miles Standish and an Indian force led by Pecksuot. This battle scarred relations between the Plymouth colonists and the natives and was fictionalized, two centuries later, in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1858 poem, The Courtship of Miles Standish.

In September 1623, a second colony led by Governor-General Robert Gorges was created in the abandoned site at Wessagusset. This colony, rechristened as Weymouth, was also unsuccessful and Governor Gorges returned to England the following year. Despite that, some settlers remained in the village and it was absorbed into the Massachusetts Bay Colony