Thirteen Colonies

The thirteen colonies were the original colonies of the United States. They were: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. On July 4, 1776, they became states and formed a new nation, the United States of America.

New England Colonies


Colony	Year Founded	Founded By	Chief Crops or Trade	Government	Religion
Massachusetts	1620	Pilgrims, led by William Bradford	Shipbuilding, fish, lumber	Governor appointed by king	established Puritan Church (after 1700 called Congregationalist);
Rhode Island	1636	Roger Williams, for religious reasons left Massachusetts	Lumber, fish.	Elected by colonists.	Complete religious freedom for all- Anglican (Episcopalian), Baptist, Quakers and other Protestants
Connecticut	1636	Thomas Hooker, who led a group from Massachusetts who wanted less government	Shipbuilding, lumber, fish	Elected by colonists	Congregationalist Church was established
New Hampshire	1623	Colonists who left Massachusetts for political and religious reasons	Molasses, fish	Governor appointed by king	Congregationalist

New England

For more detailed treatments, see Connecticut Colony and Plymouth Colony.
The Pilgrims were a small Protestant sect based in England and the Netherlands. One group sailed on the Mayflower and briefly landed in New York before their eventual settling in Massachusetts. After drawing up the Mayflower Compact by which they gave themselves broad powers of self-governance. They established the small Plymouth Colony in 1620 and later merged with the Massachusetts Bay colony. William Bradford was the main leader.

Puritans

For a more detailed treatment, see Puritans.
The Puritans, a much larger group than the Pilgrims, established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629 with 400 settlers. This group was the Puritans who sought to reform the Church of England by creating a new, pure church in the New World. Within two years, an additional 2,000 arrived. The Puritans created a deeply religious, socially tight-knit and politically innovative culture that still lingers on in the modern United States. They hoped this new land would serve as a "redeemer nation." Seeking the true religion, they fled England and in America created a "nation of saints" or the "City upon a Hill," an intensely religious, thoroughly righteous community designed to be an example for all of Europe. Roger Williams, who preached religious toleration, separation of Church and State, and a complete break with the Church of England, was banished and founded Rhode Island Colony, which became a haven for other religious refugees from the Puritan community. Anne Hutchinson, a preacher of Antinomianism likewise was exiled to Rhode Island.

Economically, Puritan New England fulfilled the expectations of its founders. Unlike the cash-crop oriented plantations of the Chesapeake region, the Puritan economy was based on the efforts of individual farmers, who harvested enough crops to feed themselves and their families and to trade for goods they could not produce themselves. There was a generally higher economic standing and standard of living in New England than in the Chesapeake. On the other hand, town leaders in New England could literally rent out the town's impoverished families for a year to anyone who could afford to board them, as a form of alms and as a form of cheap labor. Along with farming growth, New England became an important mercantile and shipbuilding center, often serving as the hub for trading between the South and Europe.

Middle Colonies


Colony	Year Founded	Founded By	Chief Crops or Trade	Government	Religion
New York	1626	Dutch; English in 1664	Shipbuilding and trade	Governor appointed by king	Dutch Reformed, and other Protestants
New Jersey	1664	Swedish and Dutch; In 1664 Sir George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley were given the land by the English Duke of York	Oats, wheat, rye	Governor appointed by king	Dutch Reformed, Quaker, others
Pennsylvania	1681	William Penn as a safe place for Quakers	Trade and Shipbuilding	Proprietor selected the governor	Quaker Lutheran, and other Protestant
Delaware	1682	William Penn	Tobacco	Proprietor selected the governor	Protestant

The Middle Colonies, consisting of the present-day states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, were characterized by a large degree of diversity—religious, political, economic, and ethnic. Many Dutch and Protestant Irish immigrants settled in these areas, as well as in Long Island and Connecticut. The Germans, called "Pennsylvania Dutch," were included in this emigration.

Southern Colonies


Colony	Year Founded	Founded By	Chief Crops or Trade	Government	Religion
Virginia	1607	John Smith, settlers from Virginia Company of London	Tobacco	Governor appointed by king	Anglican Church was established
Maryland	1634	Lord Baltimore as a safe place for Catholics	Tobacco	Proprietor selected by governor	Protestant and Catholic
North Carolina	1654	Virginia settlers	Tar from pine trees, tobacco, pitch, and rice	Governor appointed by king	Protestant
South Carolina	1663	English and other Europeans	Tar from pine trees, tobacco, pitch, and rice	Governor appointed by king	Protestant
Georgia	1732	James Oglethorpe, brought English debtors to protect Georgia from the Spanish	Indigo, tobacco	Governor appointed by king	Protestant

Lower South

The colonial South included the plantation colonies of the Chesapeake region (Virginia and Maryland) and the lower South (Carolina, which eventually split into North and South Carolina, and Georgia).

Carolinas

The first attempted English settlement south of Virginia was the Province of Carolina. It was a private venture, financed by a group of English businessmen calling themselves the "Lords Proprietors," who obtained a Royal Charter to the Carolinas in 1663, hoping that a new colony in the south would become profitable like that of Jamestown. Carolina was not settled until 1670, and even then the first attempt failed because there was no incentive for emigration to the south. However, eventually the Lords combined their remaining capital and financed a settlement mission to the area led by John West. The expedition located fertile and defensible ground at what was to become Charleston (originally Charles Town for Charles II of England), thus beginning the English colonization of the mainland. The original settlers in South Carolina established a lucrative trade in provisions, deerskins and Indian captives with the Caribbean islands. They came mainly from the English colony of Barbados and brought African slaves with them. Barbados, as a wealthy sugarcane plantation island, was one of the early English colonies to large numbers of Africans in plantation style agriculture. The cultivation of rice was introduced during the 1690s via Africans from the rice-growing regions of West Africa. North Carolina remained a frontier through the early colonial period.

At first, South Carolina was politically divided. Its ethnic makeup included the original settlers, a group of rich, slave-owning English settlers from the island of Barbados; and Huguenots, a French-speaking community of Protestants. Nearly continuous frontier warfare during the era of King William's War and Queen Anne's War drove economic and political wedges between merchants and planters. The disaster of the Yamasee War, in 1715, set off a decade of political turmoil. By 1729, the proprietary government had collapsed, and the Proprietors sold both colonies back to the British crown.

Georgia

File:SavannahColony.JPG

Savannah, Georgia Colony, Early 1700's

James Oglethorpe, an 18th century British Member of Parliament, established Georgia Colony as a common solution to two problems. At that time, tension between Spain and Great Britain was high, and the British feared that Spanish Florida was threatening the British Carolinas. Oglethorpe decided to establish a colony in the contested border region of Georgia and populate it with debtors who would otherwise have been imprisoned according to standard British practice. This plan would both rid Great Britain of its undesirable elements and provide her with a base from which to attack Florida. The first colonists arrived in 1733.

Georgia was established on strict moralistic principles. Slavery was forbidden, as was alcohol and other forms of supposed immorality. However, the reality of the colony was far from ideal. The colonists were unhappy about the puritanical lifestyle and complained that their colony could not compete economically with the Carolina rice plantations. Georgia initially failed to prosper, but eventually the restrictions were lifted, slavery was allowed, and it became as prosperous as the Carolinas.

Bibliography

Reference

Cooke, Jacob Ernest, ed. Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies (3 vol 1993), comprehensive coverage with Spanish, French and Dutch receiving equal attention with British

Scholarly secondary sources

Adams, James Truslow. The Founding of New England, (1921)online edition
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (2005) excerpt and text search
Andrews, Charles M. "Colonial Commerce," American Historical Review, 20#1 (October 1914) pp. 43-63 online
Andrews, Charles M. Our Earliest Colonial Settlements: Their Diversities of Origin and Later Characteristics (1933) briefly discusses Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland) online edition
Andrews, Charles M. Colonial Self-Government, 1652-1689.. (1904) online edition
Andrews, Charles M. The Colonial Period of American History, (1934-38) (the standard overview in four volumes) online at ACLS e-books
Bailyn, Bernard. Voyagers to the West: a passage in the peopling of America on the eve of the Revolution (1986), winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History
Bancroft, George. History of the United States of America, from the discovery of the American continent. 10 vol (1860) online editions
Beer, George Louis. "British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765," Political Science Quarterly, vol 22 (March 1907) pp 1-48; online edition
Beeman, Richard R. "The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America (2006) excerpt and text search
Berkin, Carol. First Generations: Women in Colonial America (1997) 276pp excerpt and text search
Bonomi, Patricia U. Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (1988) (online at ACLS History e-book project)
Bonomi, Patricia U. A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York, (1971) online edition
Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (1996) 512pp excerpt and text search
Bruce, Philip A. Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Material Condition of the People, Based on Original and Contemporaneous Records. (1896), very old fashioned history online edition
Carr, Lois Green and Philip D. Morgan. Colonial Chesapeake Society (1991), 524pp excerpt and text search
Crane, Verner W. The Southern Frontier, 1670-1732, (1920), online edition
Crane, Verner W. "The Southern Frontier in Queen Anne’s War," American Historical Review vol 24, (April 1919) pp 379-95. online edition
Gipson, Lawrence. The British Empire Before the American Revolution (15 volumes) (1936-1970), Pulitzer Prize; highly detailed discussion of every British colony in the New World
Greene, Evarts Boutelle. Provincial America, 1690-1740, (1935) survey by scholar online edition
Hatfield, April Lee. Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (2007) excerpt and text search
Illick, Joseph E. Colonial Pennsylvania: A History, (1976) online edition
Kammen, Michael. Colonial New York: A History, (2003)
Labaree, Benjamin Woods. Colonial Massachusetts: A History, (1979)
Kulikoff, Allan. From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers (2000) online edition
Middleton, Richard. Colonial America: A History, 1565-1776 (3rd ed 2002), 576pp excerpt and text search
Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975) Pulitzer Prizeonline edition
Osgood, Herbert L. The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century. 3 vol (1904-07) online edition
Tate, Thad W. Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century (1980) excerpt and text search
Taylor, Alan. American Colonies, (2001) survey by leading scholar excerpt and text search
Vickers, Daniel, ed. A Companion to Colonial America. 2003. 576 pp.

Primary sources

Kavenagh, W. Keith, ed. Foundations of Colonial America: A Documentary History (1973) 4 vol.
Miller, Kerby A., et al eds. Irish immigrants in the land of Canaan: letters and memoirs from colonial and revolutionary America, 1675-1815 (2004) online at ACLS e-books