The Massachusetts Bay Colony owes its name to a Native American people, the Massachusett. Their name was roughly translated as “near the Blue Mountains” or “Near the Great Mountain”, the 194-meter-high mountain (Great Blue Hill) located about 15 kilometers southwest of Boston in the “Blue Hills Reserve”. Officially, Massachusetts is a “Commonwealth”, but this has no practical effect on the state’s status within the nation. Massachusetts has always played a prominent role in American history. Plymouth was the second permanent English settlement in North America. Many towns were founded by English colonists around 1620-1640. In the 18th century, Boston developed into the “cradle of freedom” since the American Revolution and thus independence from Great Britain began there. In the 19th century, Massachusetts was the first state to abolish slavery. Massachusetts was also the starting point of the “Temperance Movement”, the movement that advocated a ban on the consumption and manufacture of alcohol. The Industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century also brought great changes in Massachusetts. Once an agricultural country and dependent on imports from Europe, Massachusetts developed into an industrial country. However, many industries soon migrated south because there was cheaper labor there. It was only after World War II that the economy recovered and began to flourish again during the 1990s. The state is a leader in health care, high technology (high tech) and education. Personalities such as John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Pierre Trudeau, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama studied at elite universities such as Harvard University in Cambridge. Check topschoolsoflaw.com for brief history of the state of Massachusetts.