1600-1754: Colonial Americans: Chronology

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1600-1754: Colonial Americans: Chronology

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1600-1754

1602

The Englishman Bartholomew Gosnold sails from England to New England with thirty-two men who intend to set up a colony; they return home when their food runs out.

1605

Pierre du Guast, Comte de Monts, establishes a Huguenot colony at Port Royal (Annapolis), Nova Scotia; the settlement founders and is sacked by the English in 1614.

1606

King James I of England is persuaded by wealthy investors to charter a jointstock company with two branches, the Plymouth Company and the Virginia Company.

1607

Over 140 men and boys form a settlement at Jamestown, Virginia; approximately one-half die before the end of the year. Jamestown will become the second oldest town in North America, after Saint Augustine, and the first permanent British settlement.
Two ships of male settlers arrive at Sagadahoc River in Maine; the colony is abandoned within two years.

1608

At least two women arrive with subsequent parties of settlers to Virginia.
The comte de Monts and Samuel de Champlain establish a trading post at Stadacona on the Saint Lawrence River. It will become Quebec, the capital of New France.

1609

Spaniards abandon San Gabriel and move the town to Santa Fe, the third oldest town in what will become the United States.

1610

Henry Hudson sails his ship the Half Moon up the river that will bear his name, thereby laying Dutch claims to present-day New York.

1612

Juan Rodrigues, a mulatto from the West Indies, sails with a Dutch trader to the Hudson River and stays behind with trade goods for a year, living among the Indians.

1619

The first Africans arrive in Virginia.

1620

Pilgrims and other colonists found Plymouth, Massachusetts.

1621

The States General of the Netherlands charters the Dutch West India Company, which is to have a monopoly on trade and settlement in North and South America and West Africa.

1624

The Dutch West India Company sends thirty families of Walloons, French speaking Protestants from Belgium, to New Netherland; they construct Fort Orange at Albany, New York.

1626

The Dutch West India Company builds a fort on Manhattan Island and calls the settlement New Amsterdam.
The first slaves are brought to New Netherland.
The village of Salem, Massachusetts, is settled.

1629

The Massachusetts Bay Company forms in England with the idea of establishing a colony for religious dissenters called Puritans.
Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, a wealthy Amsterdam merchant, receives a patroonship (land grant) and the right to settle families around Albany, New York.
Samuel de Champlain surrenders Quebec to the Scotsmen Lewis and Thomas Kirke, but they are uninterested in colonization. At the treaty of SaintGermain-en-Laye all French territory seized by the English is returned to France.

1630

English Puritans, sponsored by the Massachusetts Bay Company, found Boston and ten other settlements in Massachusetts.

1632

The French return to Quebec.
King Charles I grants his friend George Calvert, first Baron Baltimore, lands in America upon which he can settle Roman Catholics.

1634

Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, establishes the colony of Maryland to be a haven for Roman Catholics who are mistrusted in England; the first settlers, however, are predominantly Protestant.
Several families leave Massachusetts and create the towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield in Connecticut.

1636

Roger Williams is expelled from Massachusetts over matters of religious orthodoxy and founds Providence in Rhode Island.
Swedish king Augustus Adolphus grants a charter for a trading company, the New Sweden Company, to open a post on the Delaware River.

1637

Reverend John Davenport and his congregation establish New Haven, Connecticut.

1638

The New Sweden Company founds its first settlement at Fort Christina, near Wilmington, Delaware.

1639

Anne Hutchinson, banished from Massachusetts, and William Coddington, a friend of Roger Williams, found Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

1640

The island of Montreal is given to the Société de Notre Dame de Montréal to establish a mission settlement with a church, school, and hospital; settlers including Jeanne Mance, a nurse, arrive the next year.
The “Great Migration” to Massachusetts ends with the collapse of the reign of King Charles I and the beginning of the English Civil War; an estimated ten thousand Englishmen had come to New England by this time.
Small settlements begin in Maine.
Englishmen, dissatisfied with religious intolerance in Massachusetts, petition the Dutch for land on western Long Island.

1641

William Coddington establishes the town of Newport, Rhode Island.

1643

Samuel Gorton establishes the town of Warwick, Rhode Island.
Johan Printz, governor of New Sweden, arrives with one hundred Swedish and Finnish settlers.

1653

The Dutch town of New Amsterdam is officially created as a municipality.

1654

Twenty-three Jews arrive in New Amsterdam from Brazil, joining two others who had arrived earlier in the year.

1655

The Dutch under Peter Stuyvesant, director general of New Netherland, take control of New Sweden, ending Swedish control over any part of North America.
The Spanish have nine missions in Apalachee, near modern Tallahassee, Florida.

1660

The Stuart monarch Charles II is restored to the English throne.

1661

The Dutch settlements at Bergen, New Jersey, and Kingston, New York, are granted town courts.

1663

Charles II issues a grant to eight proprietors for the region known as the Carolinas.

1664

The Dutch found Schenectady, New York.
During the second Anglo-Dutch War the English take New Netherland and rename the colony New York.

1670

The Carolina proprietors found a settlement called Charles Town on the Ashley River; some of the new settlers come from Barbados and bring African slaves with them.
Some twenty-eight hundred Spaniards live in the upper valley of the Rio Grande, many of them in Santa Fe.

1673

Spaniards at Saint Augustine start construction of the stone fort of San Marcos; they finish in 1687.
Sieur Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette descend the Mississippi River and almost reach the Gulf of Mexico.

1676

William Penn and others purchase West New Jersey, hoping to create a haven for Quakers.

1678

Jews in Newport, Rhode Island, buy land for a cemetery. By 1685 many of these people, who had originally lived in Barbados, will leave Rhode Island.

1680

Lowland Scots begin to arrive in New Jersey.
The Charles Town settlement of Carolina is moved to the junction of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers.
An Indian uprising, known as the Pueblo Revolt, forces the evacuation of Santa Fe, and many refugees flee to El Paso.

1681

Charles II grants William Penn lands to pay off a debt owed to his father, Adm. Sir William Penn. Pennsylvania, or Penn’s Woods, will be a refuge for Quakers and other religious minorities.

1682

Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and a large band of Frenchmen and Indians descend the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.

1683

Francis Daniel Pastorius and a small contingent of Germans settle in Germantown, just north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1685

King Louis XIV revokes the Edict of Nantes, which had protected French Protestants. They flee France, migrating to England, the Netherlands, Massachusetts, New York, and South Carolina.
Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, with several hundred colonists, lands at Matagorda Bay in what is now Texas; the settlement ends in disaster.

1686

German Pietists, such as Mennonites and Dunkers, arrive in Pennsylvania.
Spaniards are beginning to abandon the missions along the Georgia coast.

1690

Jews begin filtering back to Newport, Rhode Island.
German Protestants flee the Palatinate after their prince converts to Roman Catholicism.

1693

The Spanish repopulate Santa Fe.

1695

Congregationalists from New England move to South Carolina.

1698

The Spanish found the settlement of Santa Rosa Pensacola in Florida.

1699

French priests from Quebec found the Mission de la Sainte Famille at Cahokia, Illinois.
A French fleet under Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville sails into Pensacola Bay, and a settlement begins at Biloxi, Mississippi.

1700

Father Eusebio Francisco Kino founds the mission of San Xavier del Bac, near modern Tucson, Arizona. He introduces cattle and wheat culture to the Indians living around the mission.
The French begin establishing more villages on the banks of the Mississippi between Cahokia and Kaskaskia. By 1735 there are six settlements and the area becomes the center of French life in the middle Mississippi valley until the founding of Saint Louis in 1764.

1701

Delaware, which had been part of Pennsylvania, is granted a separate charter, although it will continue to share a governor with Pennsylvania.

1702

East and West New Jersey become a single united royal province.
The French establish the town of Saint Louis on Mobile Bay in the Gulf of Mexico.
The French establish a mission at Kaskaskia.
As part of the War of the Spanish Succession, known as Queen Anne’s War in America, the English governor of South Carolina, James Moore, attacks Saint Augustine, burning outposts and missions in Apalachee, or northern Florida.

1707

The Act of Union unites Scotland and England, allowing Scots to migrate more freely to America.

1708

Blacks outnumber whites in South Carolina and will continue to do so through the American Revolution.

1709

Swiss Mennonites first migrate to Pennsylvania.

1710

Rhinelander Germans settle on the Schoharie River in New York, but most leave for Pennsylvania after a brief stay.

1711

French colonists establish a permanent settlement at Mobile, Alabama.

1715

The Jacobite uprising in Scotland causes many Scots to immigrate to America.

1716

The Spanish set up four missions and a presidio, or fort, in East Texas.

1717

Scotch-Irish settlers arrive in the Delaware River valley, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

1718

The Spanish found the presidio of San Antonio de Bejar and the mission of San Antonio de Valero at San Antonio, Texas.
France creates the province of Louisiana, which includes the Illinois country of the middle Mississippi; New Orleans becomes the capital.
Pennsylvania grants land to Scotch-Irish settlers to found the town of Donegal.

1720

German Lutheran, German Reformed, and Scotch-Irish immigrants begin arriving in Pennsylvania.

1729

North and South Carolina become royal colonies.

1730

Jews begin to settle in Philadelphia.
Settlement of the Shenandoah Valley begins.

1731

Sixteen families from the Canary Islands settle around the mission and presidio of San Antonio.

1732

The English Crown approves a charter for the colony of Georgia.

1733

James Oglethorpe arrives with the first English settlers in Georgia.
Jews arrive in Georgia.

1734

Germans from Salzburg settle in Georgia.

1735

Moravians arrive in Pennsylvania and Georgia after their expulsion from Austria.

1736

Highland Scots are recruited to settle at Darien on the Altamaha River in Georgia.

1738

Former slaves who had escaped from South Carolina and converted to Catholicism are formed into a regiment by Spanish authorities and placed in a settlement called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose just north of Saint Augustine; they remain there until 1763.

1740

Settlers, including the Scotch-Irish, move into the piedmont of North Carolina.
The last of the Moravians leave Georgia for Pennsylvania over a misunderstanding about their pacifism.

1745

A second Jacobite uprising in Scotland fails, and many Highland Scots leave for America.

1750

Settlers, including the Scotch-Irish, move into the backcountry of South Carolina.

1752

Congregationalists who had resettled in South Carolina from New England leave unfertile lands and begin moving to Georgia.
The Crown takes over Georgia from the trustees, and it becomes a royal colony.
Moravians settle in North Carolina.