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Period: to
17th Century
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Jamestown, Virginia.
Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America, is established by the London Company in southeast Virginia. -
House of Burgesses.
The House of Burgesses, the first representative assembly in America, meets for the first time in Virginia. The first African slaves are brought to Jamestown. -
Mayflower Compact
The Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts is established by Pilgrims from England.
Before disembarking from their ship, the Mayflower, 41 male passengers sign the Mayflower Compact. The Mayflower Compact was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was written by the male passengers of the Mayflower, consisting of separatist Puritans, adventurers, and tradesmen whom were fleeing from religious persecution by King James of England. -
Thanksgiving
The first Thanksgiving celebration is held in the autumn for three days between the Pilgrims and members of the Wampanoag tribe, who had helped them settle and plant the colony's land. -
Indian Massacre
The Indian Massacre of 1622 occurs when Chief Opchanacanough and the Powhatan Confederacy tried to rid the colony of settlers. One third of the colony at the time, three hundred people, were killed. -
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The first vessels of Winthrop's eleven ship fleet, eventually totaling seven hundred aboard, leaves England for the Puritan colony already established in Salem, establishing the foundation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. -
Harvard
Harvard College is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts. -
Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island is founded as a colony by Roger Williams two years after his banishment from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Its charter would be granted eight years later as a democratic colony believing in the separation of church and state. -
Yorktown
York, Maine of the Massachusetts Colony (known as Georgeana in colonial times) becomes the first incorporated city in the American colonies. -
Slavery
Slavery is legalized in Connecticut and recognized in the American colonies. -
Navigation Act
The Navigation act is passed by British Parliament to control colonial commerce in the New World. -
New York
Three hundred British troops seize New Netherlands from the Dutch in a peaceful takeover. The Duke of York, brother to Charles II, is granted the Dutch province and city of New Amsterdam, renaming them New York. -
Bacon's Rebellion
Bacon's Rebellion causes the burning of Jamestown. Nathanial Bacon leads the rebellion of planters against Governor Berkeley. Bacon would perish and twenty-three others were executed. -
Salem Witch Trials
(1692-1693) The Salem witch hunts, spurred by preaching, results in the arrest of one hundred and fifty people and the death of nineteen. These trials were held in Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex counties. -
American Population
The population of the American colonies reaches
approximately 275,000 -
Period: to
18th Century Colonies
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Newspaper
John Campbell founds the Boston News-Letter, the first
successful newspaper in America -
Poor Richard's Almanac
Benjamin Franklin publishes Poor Richard's Almanac. -
The Conestoga Wagon
The Conestoga wagon is developed in Pennsylvania,
helping improve overland travel into the frontier -
French and Indian War
The French and Indian war begins between Great Britain and France. Both ally with different Native American tribes. -
End of War
The British win the French and Indian War gaining most of France's territory in North American. -
Stamp Act
The British government imposes the Stamp Act on the colonies.The Stamp Act was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain which imposed a direct tax on the British colonies in America and required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp. The colonies protest with the Stamp Act Congress. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a deadly riot that occurred on March 5, 1770, on King Street in Boston. It began as a street brawl between American colonists and a lone British soldier, but quickly escalated to a chaotic, bloody slaughter. The conflict energized anti-British sentiment and paved the way for the American Revolution. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773, at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. The event was the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists. -
First Continental Congress
In the spring of 1774, the British Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, which quickly became known in the North American colonies as the Intolerable Acts.
The Intolerable Acts were aimed at isolating Boston, the seat of the most radical anti-British sentiment, from the other colonies.
Colonists responded to the Intolerable Acts with a show of unity, convening the First Continental Congress to discuss and negotiate a unified approach to the British. -
Revolutionary War Begins
The Revolutionary War begins with the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The Second Continental Congress is held. The Battle of Bunker Hill occurs. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was originally written by Thomas Jefferson. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Jefferson then worked together to make changes to the document. The final draft of the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776, but the actual signing of the final document was on August 2, 1776. It was an official act taken by all 13 American colonies in declaring independence from British rule. -
Treaty of Paris
The Revolutionary War officially ends with the Treaty of Paris. -
Constitutional Convention
The Constitution is adopted by the Constitutional Convention. The point of the event was decide how America was going to be governed. Although the Convention had been officially called to revise the existing Articles of Confederation, many delegates had much bigger plans. -
Presidency
George Washington becomes the first President of the United States. -
Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights is added to the Constitution as the first ten amendments. -
Cotton Gin
The cotton gin is invented by Eli Whitney. It revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States, but also led to the growth of slavery in the American South as the demand for cotton workers rapidly increased. -
Period: to
19th Century
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Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 brought into the United States about 828,000 square miles of territory from France, thereby doubling the size of the young republic. What was known at the time as the Louisiana Territory stretched from the Mississippi River in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west and from the Gulf of Mexico in the south to the Canadian border in the north. -
The War of 1812
The War of 1812 begins against Great Britain. -
Battle of New Orleans
U.S. troops led by Andrew Jackson defeat the British at the Battle of New Orleans. End of war with Britain. -
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine is the best known U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere. Buried in a routine annual message delivered to Congress by President James Monroe in December 1823, the doctrine warns European nations that the United States would not tolerate further colonization or puppet monarchs. The doctrine was conceived to meet major concerns of the moment, but it soon became a watchword of U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere. -
Texas
Sam Houston becomes president of the Republic of Texas. -
The Battle of the Alamo
In December 1835, during Texas’ war for independence from Mexico, a group of Texan volunteer soldiers occupied the Alamo, a former Franciscan mission located near the present-day city of San Antonio. On February 23, 1836, a Mexican force numbering in the thousands and led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna began a siege of the fort. For Texans, the Battle of the Alamo became an enduring symbol of their heroic resistance to oppression and their struggle for independence. -
Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears was a series of forced relocations of Native Americans in the United States from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States, to areas to the west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as Indian Territory. -
Mexican-American War begins
The Mexican-American War, waged between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848, helped to fulfill America's "manifest destiny" to expand its territory across the entire North American continent. -
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad -
Presidency
Abraham Lincoln is elected president. The 16th ever U.S. President. -
Civil War
The start of the American Civil War. The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865, between the North and the South. The Civil War began primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Union Army wins the Battle of Gettysburg.The battle involved the largest number of casualties of the entire war and is often described as the war's turning point. This is also when Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves in the South. -
End of Civil War
The American Civil War comes to an end with General Robert E. Lee surrendering at the Appomattox Court House. President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated. -
End of Slavery
Slavery is outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment. -
Alaska Purchase
On March 30, 1867, the United States reached an agreement to purchase Alaska from Russia for a price of $7.2 million. The Treaty with Russia was negotiated and signed by Secretary of State William Seward and Russian Minister to the United States Edouard de Stoeckl. -
First Transcontinental Railroad Completed
The First Transcontinental Railroad was a 1,912-mile continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay -
Telephone
The invention of the telephone, although generally credited to Alexander Bell, was the culmination of work done by many individuals, and led to an array of lawsuits relating to the patent claims of several individuals and numerous companies.
