Nowell had dealings with transatlantic merchants and as the Winthrop Fleet was being assembled, he was recommended as good counsel concerning buying a ship.
[2] In 1630 Nowell sailed with John Winthrop as a part of the original Puritan expedition to Massachusetts.
Soon after arriving in the New World, Nowell became one of the original settlers of Charlestown, one of Massachusetts' earliest Puritan communities.
In 1656 the General Court, sensible of the low condition of the family, initially granted 2,000 acres (8.1 km2), with a further 3,200-acre (13 km2) grant later [6] His eldest surviving son Samuel Nowell (1634–1688) graduated from Harvard College in 1653, and was chaplain under General Josiah Winslow in King Philip's War.
The founder of Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz, was a descendant of Nowell.