Why did the New England character develop as it did?

Whenever we talk about the character of some place and how
it came to be, we are necessarily guessing or speculating.  There is no way to
definitively prove why the character of a region (to the extent that it truly has such a
thing) came to be.

The most common answer for this would be
that the character of New England came about because of its Puritan and family-oriented
background.  These are the things that made New England different from the other
colonies.

Because of these factors, for example, New
England came to be an egalitarian and educated area.  The Puritans did not believe much
in hierarchy and they did believe very strongly that people needed to be educated so
they could read the Bible.  Because of Puritanism and the large number of families, New
England came to be a more sober area without the flamboyance of places like the
South.

From these factors came the hard-working, sober,
egalitarian nature of New England.