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House of Burgess
The Virginia House of Burgesses was the first legislative assembly of elected representatives in North America.The House was established by the Virginia Company, who created the body as part of an effort to encourage English craftsmen to settle in North America and to make conditions in the colony more agreeable for its current inhabitants. Its first meeting was held in Jamestown, Virginia, on July 30, 1619 -
Mayflower Compact
The Mayflower Compact was an agreement signed in 1620 between the settlers from the Mayflower who landed at Plymouth Rock and Britain to ensure a fair government that would be ruled by majority. -
Stamp Act
A tax imposed by England on the colonies on items such as newspapers and pamphlets -
Quartering Act
On this day, Parliament passes the Quartering Act, outlining the locations and conditions in which British soldiers are to find room and board in the American colonies. -
Declaratory
The Declaratory Act of 1766 was a British Law, passed in mid March by the Parliament of Great Britain, that was passed at the same time that the Stamp Act was repealed. The colonists celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act and their political victory. -
Townshend Acts
Designed to collect revenue from the colonists in America by putting customs duties on imports of glass, lead, paints, paper, and tea. -
The Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a street fight between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks and a squad of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed. -
Tea Act
The act’s main purpose was not to raise revenue from the colonies but to bail out the floundering East India Company, a key actor in the British economy. The British government granted the company a monopoly on the importation and sale of tea in the colonies. -
Boston Tea Party
Was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston. Disguised as American Indians, the demonstrators destroyed an entire shipment of tea, which had been sent by the East India Company, in defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773. They boarded the ships and threw the chests of tea into Boston Harbor, ruining the tea. -
Paul Revere and William Dawes Ride
William Dawes is the usually forgotten shoe maker who rode with Paul Revere to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that the British were coming to arrest them -
Common Sense
A book by Thomas Paine that inspired people in the Thirteen Colonies to declare and fight for independence from Great Britain in the summer of 1776. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as 13 newly independent sovereign states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. Instead they formed a new nation—the United States of America.
