The Puritan approach to land ownership was neither socialist nor libertarian. It was something stranger and, in some ways, more sophisticated than either: a system where private property existed within a framework of communal obligation, and where the town --- not the individual --- was the fundamental unit of settlement.
When a new town was established in Massachusetts Bay, the General Court granted land not to individuals but to a group of proprietors, who then divided it among families. Every household received a home lot, a share of planting land, and rights to the common --- meadows, woodlots, and pastures shared by all.
"No man shall set his dwelling house above half a mile from the meeting-house, on pain of forfeiture of the same." --- Dedham Town Records, 1636
This was not merely practical; it was theological. The Puritans believed that God had given them the land as a covenant community, not as isolated individuals. To spread out and live apart was to break the covenant. The town was a covenanted body, and the land was its physical expression.
The commons were carefully regulated. Grazing rights were proportional to a family's holdings. Timber could be cut only for personal use, not for sale. New arrivals had to be approved by the town meeting before receiving land --- because every new family member affected the balance of the whole.
William Bradford, the long-serving governor of Plymouth Colony, recorded what happened when the colony briefly experimented with communal farming (all labor shared, all produce pooled):
"The failure of this experiment of communal service, which was tried for several years, and by good and honest men, proves the emptiness of the theory of Plato and other ancients... that the taking away of private property, and the possession of it in community, would make a state happy and flourishing."
But Bradford's alternative was not unregulated private property. It was bounded private property --- individual plots within a communal framework, private initiative disciplined by public accountability. The Puritans found the sweet spot that both collectivism and radical individualism miss.
Today we oscillate between "the government should own everything" and "property rights are absolute." The Puritans would have rejected both. They understood that property is a social institution --- created by community, sustained by community, and accountable to community.