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Jamestown
The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. -
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Founded in 1610 by Gov. Don Pedro de Peralta, it was named Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asis (Spanish: “Royal City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi”) and developed around a central plaza. -
Pocahontas and John Rolfe
In 1614, Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Indians, was baptized in Christianity and married planter John Rolfe, giving birth to her son Thomas. -
House of Burgesses
With its origin in the first meeting of the Virginia General Assembly at Jamestown in July 1619, the House of Burgesses was the first democratically-elected legislative body in the British-American colonies. -
Dutch ship brings slaves to Virginia
The first African slaves were brought to Virginia by Captain Jope in a Dutch ship. Governor Yeardley and a merchant, Abraham Piersey, exchanged twenty of them for supplies. These Africans became indentured servants like the white indentured servants who traded passage for servitude. -
Massachusetts Bay Colony
Massachusetts Bay Colony, one of the original English settlements in present-day Massachusetts, was settled in 1630 by a group of about 1,000 Puritan refugees from England under Gov. John Winthrop and Deputy Gov. Thomas Dudley. -
Maryland Toleration Act of 1649
The Maryland Toleration Act of 1649 ensured religious freedoms to Christian settlers of different denominations who settled in Massachusetts. Lawmakers hoped that it made Massachusetts a more desirable location for immigration and was the first law to protect religious freedom in the Thirteen Colonies. -
Navigation Acts
In 1651, the British Parliament, in the first of what became known as the Navigation Acts, declared that only English ships would be allowed to bring goods into England and that the North American colonies could only export their commodities, such as tobacco and sugar, to England. -
Bacon's Rebellion
Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion held by Virginia settlers that took place from 1676 to 1677. It was led by Nathaniel Bacon against Colonial Governor William Berkeley after Berkeley refused Bacon's request to drive Native American Indians out of Virginia. -
Salem Witch Trials
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, 19 of whom were executed by hanging. -
Reverend Francis Le Jau
Francis Le Jau wrote numerous letters to the Society for the SPG describing events that were taking place in the colony of South Carolina as well as his own activities.[5] He arrived in the colony in December 1706 and describes the colonists celebrating their victory over an attempted invasion launched by the French Captain LeFeboure. -
Stone Rebellion
The Stono Rebellion was a slave revolt that began on 9 September 1739, in the colony of South Carolina. It was the largest enslaved rebellion in the Southern Colonies, with 25 colonists and 35 to 50 Africans killed. -
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. -
Proclamation Line of 1763
The Proclamation Line of 1763 was a British-produced boundary marked in the Appalachian Mountains at the Eastern Continental Divide. Decreed on October 7, 1763, the Proclamation Line prohibited Anglo-American colonists from settling on lands acquired from the French following the French and Indian War. -
Currency Act
The Currency Act or Paper Bills of Credit Act is one of several Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain that regulated paper money issued by the colonies of British America. The Acts sought to protect British merchants and creditors from being paid in depreciated colonial currency. -
Quartering Act
The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house all the soldiers, then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in local inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualling houses, and the houses of sellers of wine. -
Sons of Liberty
The Sons of Liberty was a loosely organized, clandestine, sometimes violent, political organization active in the Thirteen American Colonies founded to advance the rights of the colonists and to fight taxation by the British government. -
Boston Massacre
Late in the afternoon of March 5, 1770, British sentries guarding the Boston Customs House shot into a crowd of civilians, killing three men and injuring eight, two of them mortally. -
Gaspee Incident
Headed by a leading merchant, John Brown, eight boatloads of armed reputable citizens overpowered the crew of the Gaspee, which had run aground in pursuit of a smuggling vessel, disabled its commander, and set fire to the ship. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was an incident in which 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company were thrown from ships into Boston Harbor by American patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians. The Americans were protesting both a tax on tea (taxation without representation) and the perceived monopoly of the East India Company. -
Louisiana Purchase
In this transaction with France, signed on April 30, 1803, the United States purchased 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. For roughly 4 cents an acre, the United States doubled its size, expanding the nation westward. -
Lewis and Clark Expedition
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. -
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its own indigenous allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It began when the United States declared war on 18 June 1812. -
Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key
“The Star-Spangled Banner,” a song based on the poem "The Defense of Fort McHenry" by Francis Scott Key, was inspired by seeing the American Flag still flying over the Baltimore fort after a night of bombardment by the British during the War of 1812. -
Treaty of Ghent
A meeting in Belgium of American delegates and British commissioners ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814. Great Britain agreed to relinquish claims to the Northwest Territory, and both countries pledged to work toward ending the slave trade. -
Missouri Compromise
Missouri Compromise, in U.S. history, was a measure worked out between the North and the South and passed by the U.S. Congress that allowed for the admission of Missouri as the 24th state. On March 3, 1820, the decisive votes in the House admitted Maine as a free state, and Missouri as a slave state, and made free soil all western territories north of Missouri’s southern border. -
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine was articulated in President James Monroe's seventh annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823. The European powers, according to Monroe, were obligated to respect the Western Hemisphere as the United States' sphere of interest. -
First steel plow
John Deere was a blacksmith who developed the first commercially successful, self-scouring steel plow in 1837 and founded the company that still bears his name.
In 1837, Deere saw a steel saw in a mill and was inspired. He removed the teeth of the saw and manipulated the remaining material to take the shape of a plow. This innovation worked almost effortlessly compared to the cast-iron plow and made deeper cuts in the soil than the prairie breaker. -
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, formed by states that had seceded from the Union. For more than 80 years, people in the Northern and Southern states had been debating the issues that ultimately led to war: economic policies and practices, cultural values, the extent and reach of the Federal government, and, most importantly, the role of slavery within American society. -
Battle of Fort Sumter
On April 12, 1861, forces from the Confederate States of America attacked the United States military garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Less than two days later, the fort surrendered. No one was killed. The battle, however, started the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in American history.