What was the purpose of Puritan communities? How did the layout of Puritan towns contribute to this purpose?

Puritan Villages-Puritan towns were designed to foster community and religious worship, not individuals' interests. These villages were small, so that each member lived within walking distance of the meeting house, in which both religious services and town meetings were held. Instead of individual farms, settlers often owned several plots of land--one for crops, another for gardening, livestock, and gathering firewood. Communal solidarity, not efficiency, shaped the arrangement of Puritan villages in New England. During the 1600s, the English population of New England grew (both from the arrival of new migrants and from births), straining the land and resources of these small communities.

Religious tensions also sometimes tore apart Puritan communities. In 1636, Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts for disagreeing with the Puritans' theories concerning the proper relationship between government and religion. Williams moved southward, where he founded the colony of Rhode Island in 1644. In 1637, Anne Hutchinson, a lay preacher, was also banished for daring to disagree with her local minister. She settled near Williams in the land that would soon become Rhode Island. Also in 1637, other Puritans founded new settlements at Hartford and New Haven (the colony of Connecticut was created in 1637, and received a charter from the English government in 1662) because they disagreed with the theological views of their ministers in Massachusetts.

Both because of migration and births, the Puritans' population increased during the 1600s. By 1650, 25,000 English settlers lived in New England; by 1675, their population reached 50,000. To accommodate their growing population, Puritan villages sometimes split into two or more communities, and some settlers left departed in order to found new towns. Population growth and the creation of new villages challenged the Puritans' attempt to maintain closely-knit communities.