Future President of the United States John Adams, then staying at his father's house in Braintree, Massachusetts, was awakened by the quake, which impressed him so much that he began a diary that night.

[6] Modern research has estimated that the quake was between 6.0 and 6.3 on the Richter scale, and the United States Geological Survey lists it as the largest earthquake in the history of Massachusetts.

Observers in the Leeward Islands nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south of Cape Ann, reported a receding of water followed by a large wave that lifted several boats ashore and left fish floundering on the beach.

Well before 1755, the new rational materialist ideas promulgated by Enlightenment scientists had begun to heavily influence the better-educated citizens of colonial America; therefore not all explanations of the event were theological.

John Winthrop, a Harvard professor, proposed an alternate explanation having to do with heat and chemical vapors inside the surface of the earth.

An Imagination that those Things are of no Use in Nature but to punish and alarm and arouse sinners, could not be derived from real Revelation, because it is far from being true, tho few Persons can be persuaded to think so.

[9]Many of the buildings in modern Boston and its surroundings are built on infill, especially in the Back Bay area, which may be prone to greater shaking and to compaction of the sand and gravel used as fill.

[3] As a consequence, the state has updated building codes and zoning laws to require that new construction and additions in vulnerable areas be built to resist earthquakes.