Even though New England attracted fewer emigrants from England than any other major region in colonial British America, New Englanders insisted that the origins of their society lay in a "Great Migration." Why they should have made such a paradoxical -- yet, for American culture, portentous -- claim is the concern of New England's Generation. Through analyses of the process of migration and settlement and of the symbolic meaning that participants attached to their experiences, the book tells the story of New England's origins as one of dynamism and change. Focusing on the lives of nearly 700 emigrants, the narrative examines such topics as the settlers' motives for leaving England, their experience of the voyage, their patterns of settlement in the New World, and their search for economic security in a new land. - Back cover.