William Pynchon was born in Springfield, Essex, England, and migrated to New England with John Winthrop aboard the Arbella in 1630. Already wealthy when he arrived, he entered the New England fur trade and operated an extensive trading network from Roxbury, near Boston, Massachusetts.

Competition in that area was already strong, but Pynchon sought a site for a trading post nearer the suppliers of fur, the Native peoples of the middle and upper Connecticut River Valley. When the Pequot nation, which had restricted trade up the Connecticut River, was decimated in 1636, Pynchon convinced the new Connecticut Colony to allow him to settle on its northern edge.

He chose the site of Springfield, Massachusetts, due to its position along major trade routes, most notably the Connecticut and Westfield rivers. Springfield’s remoteness from colonial authority meant that Pynchon had near-absolute autonomy. He and the Connecticut Colony quickly had a falling out, and in 1638, Pynchon allowed the Massachusetts Bay Colony to claim jurisdiction over Springfield, thus confirming Massachusetts’s boundary with Connecticut.

Pynchon ran his town almost single-handedly, acting as magistrate, representative to Boston, and captain of the militia. But his religious views did not conform to the Puritan mainstream, and when he expressed them in a tract, “The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption,” a committee of clergy denounced it. Although he partially recanted his views in public, he paid a strong political price and lost his seat in Boston. Disgruntled, he returned to England with his wife in 1651. He left his son, John Pynchon (1626-1703), behind, along with a remarkable economic empire.