THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES

Transcription

1 THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES MASSACHUSETTS The Pilgrims were the first group to settle in what is now Massachusetts. In 1620, they established the settlement of Plymouth. While on board their ship, The Mayflower, the Pilgrims took it upon themselves to write a set of laws for their new colony. They called these laws The Mayflower Compact which became the first form of selfgovernment in the New World. The Pilgrims were not the only group to seek religious freedom in the New World. In 1828, the Puritans founded a colony where Salem now stands. The Puritans did not want to separate from the Church of England; they only wanted to rid, or purify, the church of certain practices they did not like. That is why they are called Puritans. A group of Puritan merchants formed a charter creating the Massachusetts Bay Company and confirmed its title to land in North America. The company made careful preparations and sent eleven shiploads of colonists to the New World. In 1630, three thousand colonists founded Boston and several smaller towns. These settlements made up what was called the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Winthrop was elected governor and became a leader in Massachusetts. It grew faster than any English colony, attracting more than twenty thousand settlers within ten years. In 1691, Plymouth became a part of Massachusetts Bay because the Pilgrims had never been able to obtain a charter from the King. Massachusetts was not only a leader in self-government, but in education as well. In 1636 the first college in America, Harvard, came into existence. In 1647, the colony passed a law, The Massachusetts Education Law, which created the first free public schools for all towns with fifty households or more. The funds for operating these schools was to be paid out of each town s public funds. RHODE ISLAND The laws of Massachusetts Bay forced everyone to worship as the Puritan leaders believed they should. Roger Williams, a teacher and minister, was forced to leave Massachusetts Bay because he was so openly critical of the religious restrictions. He and his followers started the town of Providence in This was the beginning of the colony of Rhode Island. Other settlements were started by people who fled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1644, Providence and other nearby settlements became the colony of Rhode Island. A charter was obtained, and the colony grew and became prosperous. Rhode Island was the first to grant complete religious freedom and to grant separation of church and state.

2 CONNECTICUT Another minister in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Thomas Hooker, became discouraged not only with the lack of religious freedom but with the lack of democracy in government as well. Because he believed that all men should vote and hold office, and that all men should have religious freedom, he led a group of his followers into Connecticut. They founded a town called Hartford in Others came and started New Haven and other towns. In 1639 the settlements were untied into the colony of Connecticut. They finally obtained a charter granting them self-government and adopted a written plan of government called the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut in For the first time, settlers wrote out a constitution for governing a colony. It offered the greatest liberty in the colonies up to that time. NEW HAMPSHIRE IN 1622, two men named Fernando Gorgas and John Mason received a grant of land from the King. The land was north of Massachusetts Bay, and they founded a settlement near the present city of Portsmouth, called Exeter. Others came from Massachusetts Bay Colony and set up fishing villages and trading posts. Because of a dispute over ownership, what is now New Hampshire was made a separate colony in 1679, and the part that is the state of Maine of today stayed part of Massachusetts Bay. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire came to be known as the New England Colonies. THE MIDDLE COLONIES South of New England there grew up another group of settlements known as the Middle Colonies. These colonies were first settled by Holland and Sweden. Merchants from Holland, hoping to find a passage to the east, hired Henry Hudson to try to find such a route in In his ship, The Half Moon, he sailed into the mouth of a great river off the northwestern coast of North America. He sailed up the river, claiming the land along the river for Holland. In 1623, a Dutch trading company founded a settlement near the mouth of the Hudson River. They called the settlement New Amsterdam. The Dutch traded about $24 worth of beads, blankets, knives and trinkets to the Indians for the entire island of Manhattan on which New Amsterdam was located. The Dutch occupied the entire Hudson River Valley. Their settlements extended from New Amsterdam to Fort Orange, where Albany, New York is today. The entire colony was called New Netherlands, and its most important business was fur trading with the Indians.

3 Colonists from Sweden settled on the Delaware River, near what is now Philadelphia. Before long, Dutch soldiers from Manhattan Island took over the Swedes land. NEW YORK The English were greatly troubled by the prosperity of New Netherlands. The English were envious of the thriving trade carried on in the splendid harbor of New Amsterdam. The English colonies to the north and south could not be joined together so long as New Netherlands remained under Dutch ownership. In 1664, an English fleet entered the harbor of New Amsterdam. Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor, wanted to fire on the English ships, but the people of New Amsterdam refused to back him up. The settlement surrendered, and New Amsterdam and the colony of New Netherlands became an English possession. The Duke of York was made proprietor, or founder, of the colony in 1664, and it was renamed New York in his honor. New Amsterdam was also renamed New York City and therefore was the first permanent settlement. NEW JERSEY The land south and east of the Delaware River, which the Dutch had taken from the Swedes, also became England s possession. The Duke of York granted this land to two English nobles, in 1664, named Carteret and Berkeley. They named their colony New Jersey with their first permanent settlement being Trenton. PENNSYLVANIA Some of the people who came to live in the southern part of New Jersey were Quakers. The Quakers were a religious group who refused to follow the rules of the Church of England. They believed that they should follow what their consciences told them was right. They also believed that war was wrong, and they refused to take part in it. William Penn, son of an admiral in the English Navy, was one of these Quakers. His father was an influential man in England, and close friend of the King. The King owed Penn a large sum of money, and gave him a large grant of land in America as payment of the debt. The land was given the name Pennsylvania (Penn s Land) and William Penn began his colony in He wanted to make Pennsylvania a place where every man had the right to worship as he pleased. He was a wise and kind proprietor. He bought land from the Indians instead of taking it, and, because of his fairness, and honesty, the Indians were friendly. Large numbers of people came to Pennsylvania, and the colony grew rapidly. In 1701, the Great

4 Law of Pennsylvania was passed which granted religious freedom for all who believed in Christ. The first settlement in the colony was Philadelphia, which means City of Brotherly Love, and it soon became one of the largest and busiest cities in all the colonies. DELAWARE Unfortunately, Penn s original grant did not include any coastline. Penn obtained land from the Duke of York, and it became part of Pennsylvania. In 1704 this area was made into a separate colony under the name of Delaware, with Dover being the first permanent settlement. THE SOUTHERN COLONIES VIRGINIA Jamestown was established as a profitable business venture, by the Virginia Company in It was firmly established by the time any other groups landed in the New World. When the colonists in Virginia began to grow tobacco, people in England became interested in starting more settlements nearby, so that they, too could share in this profitable business. In 1619, all of the Burgesses, or counties, throughout the entire Virginia area created the first representative government in America, called the Virginia House of Burgesses. Two Burgesses, or representatives, were elected from each area to represent all of the inhabitants of that Burgess in making laws. In 1619 some other firsts occurred: 1) the first boatload of women arrived in the New World and 2) the first Negro slaves were brought to America from Africa by English privateers. MARYLAND In 1634 Lord Baltimore established a colony on a grant of land given to him by the King. He named the colony Maryland in honor of the Queen, and the settlement he began was called Baltimore. Lord Baltimore was a Catholic and he hoped to make his colony a place where Catholics could live and have religious freedom. This did not mean that settlers of other faiths were not welcome in his colony, for Lord Baltimore allowed everyone who settled in Maryland to worship as he pleased. In 1649, when the Catholics in the colony became outnumbered by people of other faiths, the Toleration Act was passed. This Act said that no Christian could be persecuted because of his beliefs. The Toleration Act of Maryland was an important step toward religious freedom in the colonies.

5 CAROLINAS South of Virginia and Maryland was a vast stretch of land which King Charles II, King of England, had given to a group of eight Noblemen. They called the region Carolina, after the Latin name for Charles. In 1670, these proprietors sent out a group which founded a settlement which they named Charleston. Carolina grew slowly, mainly because powerful Indian tribes caused the settlements a great deal of trouble. The Noblemen who ruled the colony did not do it well, and this was another reason for the colony s slow growth. In 1729 the people became very unhappy with the way the colony was ruled and they asked the King to take it away from the eight Noblemen. He did so and at the same time he divided Carolina into two parts-north Carolina and South Carolina. GEORGIA Between South Carolina and Spanish Florida was a large tract of land. A group of men called the Georgia Trustees were given this land for a colony. James Oglethorpe, the leader of the trustees, was interested in founding a colony for unfortunate people who were imprisoned for nonpayment of debts or other trifling matters. He hoped to give these prisoners a new start in life. The King was interested in establishing a colony here to prevent Spain from advancing northward from Florida. Oglethorpe founded the village of Savannah in 1733 and the colony was called Georgia. It grew slowly because of trouble with Spain and Indian attacks. But when the King took over in 1752 it began to grow stronger.