I. Diverse Motives for Migration
• Purer form of worship• Acquiring wealth, land, and better social status• Escape jail, bad marriage or life-long poverty• Sense of adventure• No single motivation adds to diversity of British
colonization• Diversity of environmental factors encountered by
colonists creates American subcultures from the outset
A. Virginia
• Settlement at Jamestown in 1607
• Initially, no cooperation and no planting
• Colony saved by the leadership of Captain John Smith
• Land offered after 7 years of labor = indentured servanthood
• The winter of 1609-1610 = “starving time”
• John Rolfe experiments with tobacco in 1612
A. Virginia (cont.)
• Reorganization of the colony in 1618
--economic diversification urged
--House of Burgesses created
--headright system introduced• Significant arrivals in 1619:
women and slaves• Many more men than women at
first• Lots of death in the early days• Native American uprisings in
1622 and 1644
A. Virginia (cont.)
• No shared sense of purpose in early days and Company officials were embezzling funds and exploiting indentures
• Virginia becomes a royal colony in 1624
• Isolation becomes a fact of life for these colonists due to geography, land policy and tobacco economy
• Leads to importance of county government
• Isolation retarded the growth of cities, schools, and churches
B. Maryland
• Founder (Proprietor) = Second Lord Baltimore
• Meant to stop Dutch influence to the north in New Netherlands
• Large estates imagined by proprietor for colonists who would become lords of their manor—headright system adopted instead
B. Maryland (cont)
• Meant to be a refuge for Catholics offering some measure of religious toleration—Act for Religious Toleration (1649)
• Great political instability
• Built around a tobacco economy
A. Pilgrims and Plymouth Plantation
• Separatists• First fled to Holland (1608-
1609)• Traveled to America on the
Mayflower (1620)--Led by William Bradford-- “Mayflower Compact”
• Significance of Squanto and Samoset
• Limited economic opportunities• Absorbed by Massachusetts
Bay colony in 1691
B. Puritans and Massachusetts Bay
• Desire to reform English (Anglican) Church, not separate from it
• Sparked the English Civil War in 1642
• Political and religious crisis in 1629 led to Puritan exodus to America
• John Winthrop leads Puritans to the Boston area in 1630
• “ The Great Migration”: 1630-1642
B. Massachusetts (cont.)
• Believed in predestination and the covenant of grace
• Unified vision and holy mission: “city on a hill”
• Entire community included in God’s covenant
• Disorder was considered very sinful
• The significance of the “conversion relation”
• Congregational form of church government
• Conflict between ministers and laity
B. Massachusetts (cont.)
• Came as nuclear families• Much less death than the
Chesapeake colonies• Fairly wide franchise for era• Town = center of public life
with the meeting house at its center
• Compact villages enhanced church attendance and spiritual surveillance
• Agricultural practices• Villagers paid taxes to support
minister and participated in the local militia
B. Massachusetts (cont.)
• Harmony, unity and rule of law were emphasized
• Certain individuals challenged this order
--Roger Williams--Anne Hutchinson--Quakers like Mary
Dyer• Puritans established four other
colonies: New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Haven and Rhode Island
A. New York
• First settled by the Dutch in 1624
• Great ethnic diversity—most heterogeneous colony in North America
• Colony was easily conquered by the English in 1664 and given by the King to his brother, James, Duke of York
• Somewhat of a royal attempt to surround the Puritans
• Closest thing to manorialism evolves here along the Hudson River– New York Patroons
B. New Jersey
• Also carved out of New Netherlands—awarded to a group of proprietors by Duke of York
• Great ethnic diversity• Tremendous religious diversity:
Quakers, Anglicans, Puritans, Scottish Presbyterians, Dutch Calvinists and Swedish Lutherans—leads to real political instability
• Colony splits in two temporarily• Becomes a royal colony in 1702• No major ports and limited
economic advantages
C. Pennsylvania
• Established as a refuge for Quakers
• Founder = William Penn• Relations with Native
Americans were good• Penn bought the 3 lower
counties of New York from the Duke of York in 1682—becomes Delaware
• Penn granted colonists religious toleration and no taxation without representation
• Philadelphia = one of the first planned American cities
C. Pennsylvania (cont.)
• Penn promoted his colony with great success throughout Europe—leads to tremendous ethnic diversity in Pennsylvania
• Penn’s stay in America was short and unhappy--Mason-Dixon Line
• Colony prospers agriculturally (wheat) but suffers political instability
• Delaware becomes separate colony in 1704
• Penn dies in 1718—broken and in prison for debt
V. Carolina
• No “Solid South” even in the colonial era
• Carolinas = political plum given to Stuart faithful following the English Civil War
• Generous land policy, representative assembly and religious toleration offered--John Locke’s Fundamental Constitution
V. Carolina (cont)
• Another failed attempt to create a conservative American pseudo-feudalism
• Poor land, poor climate and no good harbor discouraged settlement
• Key proprietor in the ultimate success of this colony = Ashley Cooper
V. Carolina (cont.)
• Search for a money-making crop consumed the early history of this region
• Half of the population before 1680 came from an overpopulated Barbados—so this colony is more like the West Indies than any other mainland colony
• Colonists engaged in Native American slave trade
• Only British colony with a Black majority