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Jamestown Founded
In 1607, Englishmen sailed forty miles up the James River in present-day Virginia to found a colony. But the location was a disaster. Terrible soil hampered agriculture, and brackish tidal water led to debilitating disease. Despite these setbacks, the English built Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in the present-day United States. This colony was the first in a series of settlements which would eventually become Virginia. -
Quebec Founded
French Settlers founded Quebec in 1608 under the leadership of Samuel de Champlain. Quebec would become the foothold for future French settlements, and was very important to what would become New France. -
Sante Fe Established.
Santa Fe, the first permanent European settlement in the Southwest, is established -
First American Tobacco Crop Planted
In 1616 John Rolfe crossed tobacco strains from Trinidad and Guiana and planted Virginia’s first tobacco crop. Tobacco would become the most important export for the Jamestown colony. -
House of Burgesses Established.
In 1619, the Virginia Company established the House of Burgesses, a limited representative body composed of white landowners that first met in Jamestown. This was one of America's first organized governments. -
Southern Slavery Begins
In 1619 a Dutch slave ship sold twenty Africans to the Virginia colonists. Southern slavery was born. -
Plymouth Colony founded
The Plymouth Colony is founded in 1620 by Pilgrims fleeing England in hopes of founding a colony of religious freedom. The Mayflower compact formed the basis of that colonies government. -
New Amsterdam Founded
The Dutch West India Company realized that in order to secure its fur trade in the area, it needed to establish a greater presence in New Netherland. Toward this end, the company formed New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in 1625. -
Massachusetts Bay Colony Founded
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by the owners of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which included investors in the failed Dorchester Company. It was a charter colony. -
Pennsylvania Established
William Penn established Pennsylvania in 1630, hoping to create a religiously tolerant colony. -
Maryland Established by Charles I
In 1632, Charles I set a tract of about 12 million acres of land at the northern tip of the Chesapeake Bay aside for a second colony in America. Named for the new monarch’s queen, Maryland was granted to Charles’s friend and political ally, Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore. Calvert hoped to gain additional wealth from the colony, as well as to create a haven for fellow Catholics. -
Providence Founded.
After his exile from Massachusetts, Roger Williams created a settlement called Providence in 1636. He negotiated for the land with the local Narragansett sachems Canonicus and Miantonomi. Williams and his fellow settlers agreed on an egalitarian constitution and established religious and political freedom in the colony. -
Connecticut Founded
Connecticut was officially organized on March 3rd of 1636, as a settlement for a Puritan congregation. The English permanently gained control of the region in 1637 after struggles with the Dutch. -
Slavery Spreads
Slavery in legalized in Connecticut and is recognized in the colonies. This would lead to the eventual legalization of slavery in the majority of colonies. -
Navigation Act Passed
The Navigation act is passed by British Parliament to control colonial commerce in the New World. -
Carolinas Founded
The economic success of the Virginia colony convinced many English aristocrats that there was money to be made in New World colonies. King Charles II gave a group of eight noblemen a large tract of land to the south of Virginia colony in 1663. They called the new colony "Carolina", the Latin form of Charles. -
New Netherland becomes New York
Although the Dutch extended religious tolerance to those who settled in New Netherland, the population remained small. This left the colony vulnerable to English attack during the 1650s and 1660s, resulting in the handover of New Netherland to England in 1664. The new colony of New York was named for the proprietor, James, the Duke of York, brother to Charles II and funder of the expedition against the Dutch in 1664. -
New Jersey Becomes a Proprietary Colony
The region which would become New Jersey was settled in by a number of different organizations and countries before finally the whole area was taken by the English in 1664. It was then consolidated into the proprietary colony, "The Province of New Jersey." -
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King Philip’s War
King Philip’s War was the culmination of many negative feelings from the Native Americans towards immigrants who were taking their land and their homes. The Mohegan, desperate for a remedy to their diminishing strength, joined the Wampanoag war against the Puritans. This produced a more violent conflict in 1675, King Philip’s War, bringing a decisive end to Indian power in New England. "King Phillip" was really the Wampanoag leader Metacom. -
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The Dominion of New England
The Dominion of New England was an administrative union of English colonies covering New England and the Mid-Atlantic Colonies (except for the Colony of Pennsylvania). Its political structure represented centralized control, and was largely unacceptable to most colonists because they deeply resented being stripped of their rights and having their colonial charters revoked. -
Massachusetts Begins Using Paper Money
In 1690, colonial Massachusetts became the first place in the Western world to issue paper bills to be used as money. These notes, called bills of credit, were issued for finite periods of time on the colony’s credit and varied in denomination. -
Salem Witch Trials
Beginning in early 1692 and culminating in 1693, Salem Town, Salem Village, Ipswich, and Andover all tried women and men as witches.Fourteen women and six men were executed. Five other individuals died in prison. The causes of the trials are numerous and include local rivalries, political turmoil, enduring trauma of war, faulty legal procedure where accusing others became a method of self-defense, or perhaps even low-level environmental contamination.