 A group of early dissenters left Dedham to found the township of Dedham in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635.Under the leadership of John Rogers, a preacher banned from his work in England, they established a settlement on the western edge of the colony first established in 1628, now a suburb of the city of Boston.Despite some early setbacks this township eventually proved very successful and a number of prominent US families can trace their ancestry from these early arrivals from East Anglia – see note below on William Tecumseh Sherman.