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Jamestown
The British establish their first American colony at Jamestown, Virginia, named for King James I, who grants the Virginia Company a charter to settle in the Chesapeake Bay region. -
Virginia 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. -
Plymouth Rock
A group of 101 Puritan English Separatists sail on board the Mayflower to America and establish Plymouth Colony on Cape Cod, New England. -
Mayflower Compact
Was the first agreement for self-government to be created and enforced in America. On September 16, 1620 the Mayflower, a British ship, with 102 passengers, who called themselves Pilgrims, aboard sailed from Plymouth, England. They were bound for the New World. -
Fundemental Orders od Connecticut
The Fundamental Orders were adopted by the Connecticut Colony council. The fundamental orders describe the government set up by the Connecticut River towns, setting its structure and powers. They wanted the government to have access to the open ocean for trading. -
Toleration Act
The Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, was a law mandating religious tolerance for Trinitarian Christians. It was passed, by the assembly of the Maryland colony, in St. Mary's City. -
Bacon's Rebellion
Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion by Virginia settlers led by Nathaniel Bacon against the rule of Governor William Berkeley. -
Glorious Revolution
Also called the Revolution of 1688, was the overthrow of King James II of England by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III, Prince of Orange. -
English Bill of Rights
The 1689 English Bill of Rights was a British Law, passed by the Parliament of Great Britain in 1689 that declared the rights and liberties of the people and settling the succession in William III and Mary II following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when James II was deposed. -
Salem Witch Trialsb
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts. -
John Peter Zenger
The trial of John Peter Zenger, a New York printer, was an important step toward this most precious freedom for American colonists. John Peter Zenger was a German immigrant who printed a publication called The New York Weekly Journal. -
Albany Plan of Union
A plan to create a unified government for the Thirteen Colonies, suggested by Benjamin Franklin, then a senior leader and a delegate from Pennsylvania, at the Albany Congress. -
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War comprised the North American theater of the worldwide Seven Years' War of 1756–63. It pitted the colonies of British America against those of New France. -
Proclamation of 1763
Issued by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, which forbade all settlement past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. -
Stamp Act
Was passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765. The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed. -
Quartering Act
On this day in 1765, Parliament passes the Quartering Act, outlining the locations and conditions in which British soldiers are to find room and board in the American colonies. The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre, known as the Incident on King Street by the British, was an incident on March 5, 1770, in which British Army soldiers shot and killed people while under attack by a mob. -
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
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts. The demonstrators, some disguised as Native Americans, in defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company. -
1st Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies who met from September 5 to October 26, 1774 at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania early in the American Revolution. -
2nd Contenintal Congress
It succeeded the First Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia between September 5, 1774 and October 26, 1774. The Second Congress managed the Colonial war effort and moved incrementally towards independence, adopting the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. -
Decloratory Act
Declaratory Act; declaration by the British Parliament that accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act. It stated that the British Parliament's taxing authority was the same in America as in Great Britain. Parliament had directly taxed the colonies for revenue in the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act. -
Decleration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule. These states would found a new nation – the United States of America. -
Treaty of Paris
Negotiated between the United States and Great Britain, ended the revolutionary war and recognized American independence. The Continental Congress named a five-member commission to negotiate a treaty–John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry Laurens.
