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Christopher Columbus makes his first voyage to the Americas.
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Sir Walter Raleigh, half brother of Humphrey Gilbert who died trying to colonize Newfoundland the year before, sends a group of colonists to Roanoke Island in Virginia (named for Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen). The next year he sends more colonists to the island. During the voyage in 1585, Sir Ralph Lane discovers the Chesapeake Bay.
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The Roanoke Colony is founded. It will disappear and become known as the "Lost Colony."
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The first English child, Virginia Dare, is born in North America at Roanoke Island on August 18. A new group of 150 settlers lands on Roanoke Island, but they arrive too late in the season to plant crops.
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When John White returns to Roanoke Island, after having been delayed by war with Spain, he discovers the entire colony has disappeared without a trace, including members of his own family, among them his young granddaughter, Virginia Dare. The colony may have been wiped out by Indians in the region. The fate of the Lost Colony remains a mystery.
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James I becomes King of England.
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Captain Christopher Newport sails into the Chesapeake Bay and up a river he names for King James I. On May 13, he founds the colony of Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America.
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Newport leaves Captain John Smith in charge of the colony, which suffers terribly from starvation and Indian attacks during its early years. New settlers arrive yearly, but in the first three years, more than 80% die. Only 60 out of 500 settlers in Jamestown survive the winter of 1609-1610.
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The Dutch explorer Henry Hudson, on his third voyage to the New World, explores what would be named the Delaware Bay and a river that would bear his name, the Hudson. In 1611 Hudson and some of his crew disappear when his crew mutiny after having been ice bound most of the winter on the shore of James Bay, the southern extension of the large Canadian bay that would become Hudson Bay.
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Pocahontas (Princess Matoaka), daughter of the chief of the Powhatans in Virginia, marries John Rolfe, an English settler and one of the leading promoters of tobacco. Her conversion to Christianity and her marriage to Rolfe help keep the peace for several years between English settlers in Virginia and the Powhatans.
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The first African slaves arrive in Jamestown. The first representative government, the Virginia House of Burgesses, meets at Jamestown.
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One hundred Pilgrims arrive on the Mayflower on November 11 off Cape Cod. Realizing they are outside the jurisdiction of the London Company, which had issued them a charter to settle in America, the Pilgrims establish a colony at Plymouth and draw up the Mayflower Compact to govern the colony. Although aided by local Indians who share food with the new settlers, about half the Pilgrims die of disease and starvation the first winter.
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Dutch colonists led by Peter Minuit purchase Manhattan Island from the chiefs of the Wappinger Confederacy and establish the colony of New Amsterdam.
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Over 1000 Congregationalist Puritans, led by Governor John Winthrop, found the Massachusetts Bay colony, settling Boston and nearby towns.
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Puritans found the city of Boston.
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Roger Williams, a 33-year-old clergyman banned from Massachusetts Bay colony, which he found intolerant of religious freedom, establishes the settlement of Providence and the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
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The Pequot War occurs in New England. The Pequot peoples are nearly wiped out.
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The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut describe the government of Connecticut. It is considered the first written Constitution of the Americas.
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England’s King Charles II charters Carolina, a large territory stretching from Virginia to Florida and from sea to sea, to eight of his loyal courtiers. In 1712 the territory is divided into two colonies, North and South Carolina.
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England captures the New Netherlands and names it the Province of New York. The city of New Amsterdam is renamed New York.
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King Philip's War begins between the colonists in New England and a group of Native American tribes including the Wampanoag people.
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Witchcraft hysteria begins in Salem, Massachusetts. Over the next two years, 20 persons are executed after trials find them guilty of being witches.
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The Sieur de Bienville establishes the city of New Orleans near the mouth of the Mississippi River, and four years later it becomes the capital of the French-owned Louisiana Territory.
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The last of the original thirteen English colonies is chartered and settled the following year by James Oglethorpe, a philanthropist. The colony is a haven for English debtors and serves as a buffer between Spanish-controlled Florida and the Carolinas.
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The French and Indian War begins between the British colonists and the French. Both sides ally with various Indian tribes.
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The First Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.