1600-1700

  • Jamestown founded

    The Virginia company sent three ships to the Americas carrying 104 colonists. They reached the Chesapeake bay which extends two hundred miles along the coast of Virginia and Maryland. to avoid Spanish raiders, they settled inland along a river. while exploring the Americas Indians guided the colonists through the land.
  • Tobacco

    Smoking had become a widespread habit in Europe. By 1620 the colony was shipping 50.000 pounds each year. by 1670 Virginia and Maryland were exporting 15 million pounds each year. Threw the Tobacco boom the soil nutrients depleted.
  • First African slaves

    English ships called the White Lion unloaded " 20 and odd Negros,"the first known enslaved Africans. Portuguese slave traders had captured them in Angola in west Africa. on the way to Mexico, the Africans were seized by the marauding White Lion.
  • Massachusetts Bay Colony founded

    Like Plymouth, the Massachusetts colony was intended to be a holy commonwealth for puritans. They wanted to purify the church of England from within. They were called non-separate congregations rather than by an Anglican bishop in England. They limited church membership to "visible saints" those who could demonstrate to the congregation that they had received the gift of God's grace.
  • Pennsylvania

    The society of Friends, known as Quakers because they were supposed to "tremble at the word of the Lord," became the most influential of several new religious groups that emerged from the English civil war. The Quakers rebelled against all forms of political and religious authority, including salaried ministers, military service, and paying taxes. Quakers discarded all formal religious ritual and embraced a fierce pacifism.
  • Navigation Act

    This Act was intended to increase control over the colonial economies. It was required that all goods going to and from the colonies be transported only in English-owned ships. The law was intended to hurt the Dutch. Dutch shipowners charged much less to transport goods than did the English.
  • Charles Town

    The First 145 English colonists in South Carolina arrived at Charles Town. They brought three enslaved Africans with them. Over the next twenty years, half the colonies came from Barbados and other island colonies in the Caribbean.
  • Bacon's Rebellion

    By 1676 one fourth of the free white men were landless. they were forced to roam the countryside, squatting on private property, working at odd jobs, poaching games, or committing other petty crimes to survive.
  • King William's War

    King William's War went from 1689 to 1697. it was the first of four major wars fought pitting Britain and its European allies against France or Spain and their allies.
  • Salem Witch Trials

    the strains generated by Massachusetts's transition from puritan utopia to royal colony. Belief in witchcraft was widespread throughout Europe and the colonies. Almost 300 new England (women) were accused of being witches and hung for it.