1. William Pynchon was an English colonist and fur trader in North America best known as the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts.
13 Facts About William Pynchon
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William Pynchon was a colonial treasurer, original patentee of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the iconoclastic author of the New World's first banned book.
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William Pynchon maintained a wide network of correspondents across the Atlantic and exchanged letters with figures such as John Winthrop, Jr.
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An original settler of Roxbury, Massachusetts, William Pynchon became dissatisfied with that town's notoriously rocky soil and in 1635, led the initial settlement expedition to Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts, where he found exceptionally fertile soil and a fine spot for conducting trade.
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William Pynchon's stance led to Springfield aligning with the faraway government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony rather than that of the closer Connecticut Colony.
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William Pynchon was one of New England's first and most business-minded settlers.
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In locating the land that would become the City of Springfield, William Pynchon found land just north of the Connecticut River's first large falls, the Enfield Falls, which was the river's northern terminus navigable by seagoing ships.
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In founding "The Great River's" northernmost settlement, William Pynchon sought to enhance the trading links with upstream Native peoples such as the Pocumtucks, and over the next generation he built Springfield into a thriving trade town and made a fortune, personally.
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William Pynchon believed that Connecticut's militant policy of intimidating and brutalizing natives was not only unconscionable, but bad for business.
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In 1649, William Pynchon found time to write a critique of his place and times' dominant religious doctrine, Puritanical Calvinism, entitled The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption.
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William Pynchon died in Wraysbury, then in Buckinghamshire in England in 1662, and was buried there at St Andrew's Church.
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William Pynchon is an ancestor of the acclaimed novelist Thomas Pynchon.
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Since 1915, the Order of William Pynchon has been awarded to individuals who have "rendered distinguished service to the community" by The Ad Club of Western Massachusetts.