Puritans who fled to the New World to escape religious persecution were, by and large, from the eastern counties of England. According to Brandeis University Professor David Hackett Fischer in his book Albion’s Seed, there are four primary American accents, which derive from the major migrations from England to the New World in the 17th and 18th centuries.ġ. The United States began as colonies of Great Britain, but the settlers didn’t trickle across the Atlantic at random.