COLONIES TAKE ROOT

The First English Settlements: England Seeks Colonies

England begins to set up colonies in the New World

The first English colony in the Americas was on any island off of North Carolina It was on Roanoke Island The first colony was established in 1585,

but was abandoned one year later The next try to colonize the island was in

1587, and the colonists mysteriously disappeared

Founding Jamestown

In 1607, a group wanted to head to America to colonize and started the Virginia Company

The group sailed to with the blessing of King James I

The group landed in what is now Virginia and built a fort called Jamestown This will be the first permanent English

settlement in the Americas

Jamestown Struggles

The land was very swampy, many settlers got diseases and died in the first summer

The settlers also struggled farming They were not farmers, they were

businessmen By spring 1608, only 38 of the original 100

colonists are alive

John Smith to the Rescue!

London sent over John Smith in the fall of 1608 He also brought over the

first English women to America

He made new, tough laws for the settlers to follow

He sometimes stole food from the local Indians

In 1609, Smith returns to England and Jamestown gets bad again

Jamestown Prospers

The crop they found to sustain the colony was tobacco, native to America The success of tobacco drew more English to settle

in America The colonists created a representative

government called The House of Burgesses This was the first representative government in

America In 1616, a Dutch ship brought the first African

slaves to Virginia At the time, these slaves were not meant to be

permanent slaves

The Plymouth Colony

King Henry VIII said that everyone in England needed to join the Church of England, of which he was the head

Separatists, those who wanted to be separate from the church, decided to move away

They first went to Holland, then decided to settle in Virginia

We call these people pilgrims, people who take a religious journey

The Mayflower Compact

The pilgrims did not land in Virginia They faced bad weather on their journey

and went off course landing in Massachusetts

They created their own rules called the Mayflower Compact It said that office holders would be elected

by adult males This was the first document in America

where the people claimed the right to govern themselves

The First Thanksgiving

The pilgrims arrived at Plymouth too late in the year and had difficulty planting crops During the winter of 1620-1621, half of the

colonists died of disease or starvation The next spring, Natives helped the

pilgrims plant crops and fish The main teacher to the pilgrims was

Squanto The next fall they had a feast and gave

thanks for their good fortune

New England Colonies

Geography of New England

Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire

Made up of hills and low mountains Soil is thin and rocky, making farming

difficult Very good fishing waters Long and snowy winters, short warm

summers This weather helped out the colonists and

they lived longer than the ones in Virginia

Puritans in Massachusetts

The Puritans were similar to the Pilgrims in that they didn’t agree with the Church of England They did not want to separate

from the church, they wanted to change it and make it more pure

In 1630, 900 Puritans formed the Massachusetts Bay Company and sailed from England to America

The Puritans were lead by John Winthrop He called for the Puritans to be a

“City on a Hill”

The Massachusetts Bay Colony The main settlement in the colony was

Boston, located on a harbor The colonists set up an elected assembly

called the General Court These members were elected but they had

to be adult male church goers The Puritans did not believe in religious

toleration

Other Colonies

Roger Williams spoke out against the intolerance of the Puritans He believed their church should be separatists

and he thought the Puritans should pay the Indians for their land they stole

The Puritans then sent him out of Massachusetts He went south and started a town called

Providence which will eventually become the colony of Rhode Island

The people in Rhode Island decided that there would be no established religion

Other Colonies cont.

Anne Hutchison also did not agree with some of the Puritans’ teachings She was also banished from the colony and headed to

south to what is now New York Connecticut

Thomas Hooker left Massachusetts and founded the town of Hartford in what is now Connecticut

New Hampshire John Wheelright as forced out of Massachusetts He went north and settled what is now New Hampshire

All of these new colonies had to get charters from the king to be able to govern themselves

Growth and Change in the Colonies Each Puritan town

held town meetings where people would debate and decided an issue

The ship building industry was a quick growing industry in New England

Middle Colonies

Geography of the Middle Colonies The Middle colonies are New York, New

Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware Major cities are New York City at the end

of the Humboldt River, and Philadelphia on the Delaware River

Better farmland and warmer climate than the New England colonies

New York and New Jersey New York was originally a Dutch colony called

New Netherland The English conquered the colony and renamed it

New York after the king’s brother, the Duke of York New York City grew slowly, but eventually became

the biggest city of the original colonies New Jersey broke off of the New York colony to

form their own colony New York and New Jersey began as proprietary

colonies, meaning they were land granted to an individual or family They both eventually became royal colonies,

meaning the colony was directly controlled by the king

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania was started by Quakers They believed that all

Quakers had a direct link to God, so they didn’t need ministers

They also believed that everybody was equal in God’s eyes

They were one of the first groups to speak out against slavery and also treated women equally

Pennsylvania cont.

William Penn, a Quaker leader, got a charter from the king of England to set up a colony in America The Quakers wanted to leave England because they

were they faced persecution in England Penn attracted other settlers from all over Europe

including Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland

He wanted his colony to be a safe place for people to practice any religion they wanted He called Pennsylvania his “holy experiment”

The relationship between the settlers in Pennsylvania and the Natives was better than in any other colony

Delaware

The land in Delaware was settled by Swedes who came to Pennsylvania

They claimed that they lived too far from Philadelphia to take part in the Pennsylvanian government So Penn granted them their own land

Growth and Change People in the Middle colonies begin making a

lot of money in farming, mostly wheat Pennsylvania is called America’s bread basket

Manufacturing begins in the mid 1700s, mostly in Pennsylvania and New Jersey

German and Scottish immigrants started settling the backcountry of America These people in the backcountry constantly

clashed with the Natives The Middle Colonies were the most diverse

colonies They had immigrants from all over northern

Europe

Southern Colonies

Geography of the Southern Colonies

The Southern Colonies are Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia

Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon survey, or drew, a line that divided Pennsylvania and Maryland That boundary is called the Mason-Dixon Line The line divides the North from the South, slave

states and free states The climate is very warm and humid They have long, hot summers that provide a

long growing season The main crops at the time were tobacco and rice They used slave labor to harvest these crops

Virginia

Virginia had the first English settlers in America and the population grew very fast

The colonists clashed with the Native Americans This is mostly because the colonists would

take the Natives’ land to farm The Natives did try to fight back, but were

defeated

Bacon’s Rebellion Most poor farmers were forced

to settle west because the richer farmers took all of the good land

The poor farmers then began to clash with the Natives in the frontier

Nathaniel Bacon became the leader of these poor farmers They attacked the Natives The governor of Virginia called

Bacon and his men rebels, so Bacon attacked Jamestown

Bacon eventually died from sickness, and a few of his men were hanged

Maryland

Maryland was started by George Calvert, a Catholic, who wanted to escape persecution in England

Maryland was first settled by Catholics and Protestants

There began to be tension between Catholics and Protestants

This led Lord Baltimore, Calvert’s son, to pass the Act of Toleration This said that all Christians were welcome in Maryland It also said that all male adult Christians could vote

and hold office

The Carolinas

People began moving south from Virginia The king granted a charter for a colony called

Carolina The northern part of the colony struggled at the

beginning The eventually began making money from growing

tobacco and producing lumber for ships The southern part of the colony prospered

They grew sugar and rice with the use of slave labor Charles Town (now Charleston) became the biggest

city in the South The colony eventually split into two colonies:

North Carolina and South Carolina

Georgia

England wanted to have a colony south of South Carolina in fear that Spain would start moving north from Florida

James Oglethorpe got the charter to start the colony He wanted the colony to be a safe haven for

debtors, people who owed money In England, these debtors could be imprisoned until

they paid their debt Georgia was supposed to be a place of small

farms, not plantations Slavery was initially illegal This was unpopular, so they quickly made slavery

legal

Changes in Southern Colonies The people who lived near the coast

mostly lived on plantations, or large farms These plantation owners quickly grew to

dominate politics and the economy in the Southern Colonies

Plantations also used mostly slave labor Slaves eventually grew to outnumber the

free people in South Carolina The people who lived in the backcountry

lived on smaller farms

Spanish Colonies

Spanish Florida Spain established a fort

called St. Augustine in fear that France might try to take Florida This fort is the first permanent

European settlement in what is not the US

To protecting themselves from the encroaching English colonies, the Spanish said that they would protect any escaped African slave from the English colonies As a result, many African

slaves fled to Florida to help protect it

Florida grew slowly and was mainly focused on three forts in the colony

Spain in the West

Spain also had control over most of the western part of the continent

This land stretched from Texas to California, from Mexico up into Wyoming