History of Boston - Wikipedia

On September 7, 1630, the city of Boston, Massachusetts was founded. From the article:

"In 1629, the Cambridge Agreement was signed in England among the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The agreement established the colony as a self-governing entity, answerable only to the king. John Winthrop was its leader, and would become governor of the settlement in the New World. In a famous sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity," Winthrop described the new colony as "a City upon a Hill."

The competing Plymouth Colony, founded in 1620, merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691.

In June 1630, the Winthrop Fleet arrived in what would later be called Salem,[2] which on account of lack of food, "pleased them not."[3] They proceeded to Charlestown, which pleased them less, for lack of fresh water. The Puritans settled around the spring in what would become Boston,[3] acquiring the land from the first English settler, William Blaxton.[4]

Trimountaine was the name given by the 1630 settlers to the peninsula that would later be incorporated as the City of Boston.[4] The name was derived from a set of three prominent hills on the peninsula, two of which were leveled as the city was modernized.[5] The middle one, Beacon Hill, shortened between 1807 and 1824, remains to this day as a prominent feature of the Boston cityscape.[6] Tremont Street still carries an alternate form of the original name.[7] The two smaller peaks were Cotton Hill (named after John Cotton, but later Pemberton Hill, at what is now Pemberton Square) and Mt. Whoredom (or Mt. Vernon, formerly at the location of the modern-day Louisburg Square).[8]

Governor Winthrop announced the foundation of the town of Boston on September 7, 1630 (Old Style),[9][10] with the place named after the town of Boston, in the English county of Lincolnshire, from which several prominent colonists emigrated. The name also derives from Saint Botolph, who is the patron saint of travelers."