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The New England Colonies: A Place for Puritans

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The New England Colonies: A Place for Puritans

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Ignite your students' passion for history through the use of intriguing primary sources! The Primary Source Reader series features purposefully leveled text to increase comprehension for different learner types. Students will learn about the Puritans and the New England colonies through an in-depth exploration of this period of history. This informational text includes captions, a glossary, an index, and other text features that will increase students' reading comprehension. It aligns with state standards including NCSS/C3, McREL, and WIDA/TESOL and prepares students for college and career readiness.

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The New England Colonies: A Place for Puritans

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Ignite your students' passion for history through the use of intriguing primary sources! The Primary Source Reader series features purposefully leveled text to increase comprehension for different learner types. Students will learn about the Puritans and the New England colonies through an in-depth exploration of this period of history.

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Plymouth Colony was an English colony in North America. It existed from 1620 to 1691. At its height, Plymouth Colony occupied most of the southeastern part of the modern state of Massachusetts.

The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plymouth. This settlement served as the capital of the colony. It is today the modern town of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Separatists and Anglicans (together, the " Pilgrims") founded the colony. With Jamestown and other settlements in Virginia Colony, it was one of the earliest successful English colonies in North America. It was the first sizable permanent English settlement in the New England region.

The colony made a treaty with Chief Massasoit. This helped to make the colony a success. The colonists played a role in King Philip's War. The colony merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony and other territories in 1691. Together they formed the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

Plymouth holds a special role in American history. Many of the Plymouth colonists left England for a place to worship in their own way. The social and legal systems of the colony became tied to their religious beliefs, as well as English custom. Many of the people and events surrounding Plymouth Colony have become part of American folklore. These include Thanksgiving and Plymouth Rock.

First Thanksgiving

The first Thanksgiving was actually a solemn ceremony in 1623 of praise and thanks to God for the colony's good fortune, in response to the arrival of additional colonists and supplies. That event probably occurred in July and consisted of a full day of prayer and worship and probably very little revelry.

The event now commemorated in the United States at the end of November each year is more properly described as a harvest festival. The original festival was probably held in early October 1621 and was celebrated by the 53 surviving Pilgrims, along with Massasoit and 90 of his men. Three contemporaneous accounts of the event survive: Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford; Mourt's Relation probably written by Edward Winslow; and New England's Memorial by Plymouth Colony Secretary (and Bradford's nephew) Capt. Nathaniel Morton. The celebration lasted three days and featured a feast that included numerous types of waterfowl, wild turkeys and fish procured by the colonists, and five deer brought by the Indians.

Related pages

Images for kids

Title page of Captain John Smith's 1616 work A Description of New England, the first text to use the name "New Plymouth" to describe the site of the future colony

Portrait of King Philip, by Paul Revere, illustration from the 1772 edition of Benjamin Church's The Entertaining History of King Philip's War

Front page of William Bradford's manuscript for Of Plimoth Plantation

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Plymouth Colony was an English colony in North America. It existed from 1620 to 1691. At its height, Plymouth Colony occupied most of the southeastern part of the modern state of Massachusetts. The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plymouth. This settlement served as the capital of the colony.

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The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement founded in 1620 on the east coast of North America. The colony was later called New England and what is now the cities of Salem and Boston. The Bay Colony also included what is now known as the States of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

John Winthrop, the founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, continued to work on the colony, and improve it any possible way. He knew that the Church of England was bad, so he decided to improve it at the New World; either colonizing the natives or getting rid of them.

There were two companies who brought settlers in the New World. The first company was the Dorchester Company but was a failure. The second company was in 1628 and called the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This was successful and brought approximately 20,000 people to the Colony.

At first the colonists had a good friendship with the Native Americans but as more Europeans moved to these areas there were problems over land borders. The Native Americans also had many different customs. These differences led first to the Pequot War (1636-1638), and then to King Philip's War (1675-1676). After these wars, the Native Americans became peaceful and others moved to different places.

The colony was doing well and made money trading with England. They also traded with the West Indies. In 1686 there was a civil war in England. King James II wanted to have total control over the colonies. After the war, the colonies remained the same until 1692. Then Sir William Phips arrived and Massachusetts Bay and the Plymouth Colony were combined. The colonists helped in the running of the government and how it would spend its money.

Earlier times

From the earliest times many Native American lived in this area. They farmed and hunted within their own land borders and did not cross each other's land. Early in the 1600s, explorers, Samuel de Champlain and John Smith made a map of the area.

Living in the New World was very hard work for the first settlers. Many became ill and died though the cold winter. There was not enough food, and the rest of the people decided to return to England after one year. For awhile there was no more talk of settling people in those parts. English ships did still come to the New England area for fishing and trading with the Indians.

Plymouth Colony

In November 1620, a group of Europeans arrived and started Plymouth Colony. Other settlements were tried near there but they failed and the people either joined the Plymouth Colony, returned to England, or lived nearby the Colony.

The people of Plymouth faced many problems during the first years and could not pay back their investors. In 1627 the companies left the colonists to take care of themselves. Edward Winslow and William Bradford, two of its leaders, wrote about the and the colony they created, called Plymouth Colony. It was published in England in 1622 called Mourt's Relation. The two men have different opinions but it was written to encourage people to come to the New World to live.

Images for kids

Detail of sounding board, Old Ship Church (1681), Hingham, Massachusetts, the oldest Puritan meetinghouse in Massachusetts

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The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement founded in 1620 on the east coast of North America. The colony was later called New England and what is now the cities of Salem and Boston. The Bay Colony also included what is now known as the States of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

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The Province of New Hampshire was a colony of England and later of Great Britain. The name was first given in 1629 to the territory between the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers on the eastern coast of North America. It was formally organized as an English royal colony on October 7, 1691, during the period of English colonization. The charter was enacted May 14, 1692, by William and Mary, the joint monarchs of England and Scotland, at the same time that the Province of Massachusetts Bay was created. The territory is now the U.S. state of New Hampshire, and was named after the county of Hampshire in southern England by Captain John Mason, its first named proprietor.

First settled in the 1620s, the province consisted for many years of a small number of communities along the seacoast and the Piscataqua River. In 1641 the communities came under the government of the neighboring Massachusetts Bay Colony, until King Charles II issued a commission to John Cutt as President of New Hampshire in 1679. After a brief period as a separate province, the territory was absorbed into the Dominion of New England in 1686. The Dominion collapsed in 1689, and the New Hampshire communities again came under Massachusetts rule until a provincial charter was issued in 1691 by William and Mary. Between 1699 and 1741 the province's governors were also commissioned as governors of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. In 1741, Benning Wentworth was appointed governor solely of New Hampshire. Wentworth laid claim on behalf of the province to the lands west of the Connecticut River, issuing controversial land grants that were disputed by the Province of New York, which also claimed the territory. These disputes resulted in the eventual formation of the state of Vermont.

The province's economy was dominated by timber and fishing. The timber trade, although lucrative, was a subject of conflict with the crown, which sought to reserve the best trees for use as ship masts. Although the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts ruled the province for many years, the New Hampshire population was more religiously diverse, originating in part in its early years with refugees from opposition to religious differences in Massachusetts.

From the 1680s until 1760, the province was often on the front lines of military conflicts with New France and the indigenous Abenaki people, seeing major attacks on its communities in King William's War, Dummer's War, and King George's War. The province was at first not strongly in favor of independence, but, with the start of the American Revolutionary War, many of its inhabitants joined the revolutionary cause. After Governor John Wentworth fled the province in August 1775, the inhabitants adopted a constitution in early 1776. Independence as part of the United States was confirmed with the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

Before colonization

Prior to English colonization, the area that is now northeastern New England was populated by bands of the Abenaki, who lived in sometimes-large villages of longhouses. Depending on the season, they would either remain near their villages to fish, gather plants, engage in sugaring, and trade or fight with their neighbors, or head to nearby fowling and hunting grounds; later they also farmed tobacco and the " three sisters": corn, beans, and squash. The seacoast was explored in the early years of the 17th century by English and French explorers, including Samuel de Champlain and John Smith.

Early English settlement

Permanent English settlement began after land grants were issued in 1622 to John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges for the territory between the Merrimack and Sagadahoc ( Kennebec) rivers, roughly encompassing present-day New Hampshire and western Maine. Settlers, whose early leaders included David Thomson, Edward Hilton, and Thomas Hilton, began settling the New Hampshire coast as early as 1623, and eventually expanded along the shores of the Piscataqua River and the Great Bay. These settlers were mostly intending to profit from the local fisheries. Mason and Gorges, neither of whom ever came to New England, divided their claims along the Piscataqua River in 1629. Mason took the territory between the Piscataqua and Merrimack, and called it "New Hampshire", after the English county of Hampshire.

Conflicts between holders of grants issued by Mason and Gorges concerning their boundaries eventually led to a need for more active management. In 1630, Captain Walter Neale was sent as chief agent and governor of the lower settlements on the Piscataqua (including Strawbery Banke, present-day Portsmouth), and in 1631 Captain Thomas Wiggin was sent to govern the upper settlements, comprising modern-day Dover, Durham and Stratham. After Mason died in 1635, the colonists and employees of Mason appropriated many of his holdings to themselves. Exeter was founded in 1638 by John Wheelwright, after he had been banished from the neighboring Massachusetts Bay Colony for defending the teachings of Anne Hutchinson, his sister-in-law. In the absence of granting authority from anyone associated with the Masons, Wheelwright's party purchased the land from local Indians. His party included William Wentworth, whose descendants came to play a major role in colonial history. Around the same time, others unhappy with the strict Puritan rule in Massachusetts settled in Dover, while Puritans from Massachusetts settled what eventually became Hampton.

Because of a general lack of government, the New Hampshire settlements sought the protection of their larger neighbor to the south, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1641, they collectively agreed to be governed from Massachusetts, provided the towns retained self-rule, and that Congregational Church membership was not required for their voters (as it was in Massachusetts). The settlements formed part of that colony until 1679, sending representatives to the Massachusetts legislature in Boston. Mason's heirs were in the meantime active in England, seeking to regain control of their territory, and Massachusetts was coming under increasing scrutiny by King Charles II. In 1679 Charles issued a charter establishing the Province of New Hampshire, with John Cutt as its first president.

First royal charters

In January 1680 Cutt took office, ending Massachusetts governance. However, Cutt and his successor, Richard Waldron, were strongly opposed to the Mason heirs and their claims. Consequently, Charles issued a second charter in 1682 with Edward Cranfield as governor. Cranfield strongly supported the Mason heirs, making so many local enemies in the process that he was recalled in 1685. In 1686 the territory was brought into the Dominion of New England, an attempt to unify all of the New England colonies into a single government. The New Hampshire towns did not suffer as much under the rule of Sir Edmund Andros as did Massachusetts. After word of the Glorious Revolution reached Boston, Massachusetts authorities conspired to have Andros arrested and sent back to England. This left the New Hampshire towns without any colonial administration, just as King William's War erupted around them. Subjected to significant French and Indian raids, they appealed to Massachusetts Governor Simon Bradstreet, who oversaw them until William and Mary issued new, separate charters in 1691 for both Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

1691 charter

Samuel Allen, a businessman who had acquired the Mason claims, was appointed the first governor under the 1691 charter. He was equally unsuccessful in pursuing the Mason land claims, and was replaced in 1699 by the Earl of Bellomont. Bellomont was the first in a series of governors who ruled both New Hampshire and the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Until 1741 the governorships were shared, with the governor spending most of his time in Massachusetts. As a result, the lieutenant governors held significant power. The dual governorship became problematic in part because of territorial claims between Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Since the southern border of the original Mason grant was the Merrimack River, and the Massachusetts charter specified a boundary three miles north of the same river, the claims conflicted, and were eventually brought to the king's attention. In 1741, King George II decreed what is now the border between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and separated the governorships, issuing a commission to Benning Wentworth as New Hampshire governor.

Wentworth broadly interpreted New Hampshire's territorial claims, believing that territories west of the Connecticut River belonged to New Hampshire. In a scheme that was effective at lining his own pockets, he sold land grants in this territory for relatively low prices, but required parts of the grants to be allocated to himself. These grants brought New Hampshire into conflict with the Province of New York, the other claimant to the territory. King George III in 1764 ruled in New York's favor, setting off a struggle between the holders of the New Hampshire Grants and New York authorities that eventually resulted in the formation of the state of Vermont. The controversy also resulted in the replacement of Wentworth by his nephew John, who would be the last royal governor of the province.

Since the province was on the northern frontier bordering New France, its communities were frequently attacked during King William's War and Queen Anne's War, and then again in the 1720s during Dummer's War. Because of these wars the Indian population in the northern parts of the province declined, but settlements only slowly expanded into the province's interior. The province was partitioned into counties in 1769, later than the other twelve colonies that revolted against the British Empire.

Revolution

Twelve other colonies joined with New Hampshire in resisting attempts by the British Parliament to impose taxes. After the American Revolutionary War began in April 1775, the province recruited regiments that served in the Siege of Boston, and was the first former European colony to formally establish an independent government, as the State of New Hampshire, in January 1776.

Belknap, Jeremy. The History of New Hampshire (1791-1792) 3 vol. classic history

Daniell, Jere. Colonial New Hampshire: A History (1982)

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Province of New Hampshire Facts for Kids

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The Province of New Hampshire was a colony of England and later of Great Britain. The name was first given in 1629 to the territory between the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers on the eastern coast of North America. It was formally organized as an English royal colony on October 7, 1691, during the period of English colonization.

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The Connecticut Colony or Colony of Connecticut, originally known as the Connecticut River Colony or simply the River Colony, was an English colony in New England which later became Connecticut.

It was organized on March 3, 1636 as a settlement for a Puritan congregation. The English permanently gained control of the region in 1637 after struggles with the Dutch. The colony was later the scene of a bloody war between the colonists and Pequot Indians known as the Pequot War.

Connecticut Colony played a significant role in the establishment of self-government in the New World with its refusal to surrender local authority to the Dominion of New England, an event known as the Charter Oak incident which occurred at Jeremy Adams' inn and tavern.

Two other English settlements in the State of Connecticut were merged into the Colony of Connecticut: Saybrook Colony in 1644 and New Haven Colony in 1662.

In 1638, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were written. The Fundamental Orders may have been drafted by Roger Ludlow of Windsor, the only trained lawyer living in Connecticut in the 1630s; they were transcribed into the official record by secretary Thomas Welles.

The Reverend John Davenport and merchant Theophilus Eaton led the founders of the New Haven Colony, which was absorbed into Connecticut Colony in the 1660s.

In the colony's early years, the governor could not serve consecutive terms, so the governorship rotated for 20 years between John Haynes and Edward Hopkins, both of whom were from Hartford. George Wyllys, Thomas Welles, and John Webster, also Hartford men, sat in the governor's chair for brief periods in the 1640s and 1650s.

John Winthrop the Younger of New London was the son of the founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and he played an important role in consolidating separate settlements into a single colony on the Connecticut River. He also served as Governor of Connecticut from 1659 to 1675, and he played an active role in obtaining the colony's 1662 charter which incorporated New Haven into Connecticut. His son Fitz-John Winthrop also governed the colony for 10 years starting in 1698.

Major John Mason was the military leader of the early colony. He was the commander in the Pequot War, a magistrate, and the founder of Windsor, Saybrook, and Norwich. He was also Deputy Governor under Winthrop. Roger Ludlow was an Oxford-educated lawyer and former Deputy Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He petitioned the General Court for rights to settle the area, and he led the March Commission in settling disputes over land rights. He is credited as drafting the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1650). He was also the first Deputy Governor of Connecticut.

William Leete of Guilford served as governor of New Haven Colony before its merger into Connecticut, and he also served as governor of Connecticut following Winthrop's death in 1675. He is the only man to serve as governor of both New Haven and Connecticut. Robert Treat of Milford served as governor of the colony, both before and after its inclusion in the Dominion of New England under Sir Edmund Andros. His father Richard Treat was one of the original patentees of the colony. Roger Wolcott was a weaver, statesman, and politician from Windsor, and he served as governor from 1751 to 1754. Oliver Wolcott was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and also of the Articles of Confederation, as a representative of Connecticut and the nineteenth governor. He was a major general for the Connecticut Militia in the Revolutionary War serving under George Washington.

The original colonies along the Connecticut River and in New Haven were established by separatist Puritans who were connected with the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies. They held Calvinist religious beliefs similar to the English Puritans, but they maintained that their congregations needed to be separated from the English state church. They had immigrated to New England during the Great Migration. In the middle of the 18th century, the government restricted voting rights with a property qualification and a church membership requirement. Congregationalism was the established church in the colony by the time of the American Civil War.

Economic and social history

The economy began with subsistence farming in the 17th century and developed with greater diversity and an increased focus on production for distant markets, especially the British colonies in the Caribbean. The American Revolution cut off imports from Britain and stimulated a manufacturing sector that made heavy use of the entrepreneurship and mechanical skills of the people. In the second half of the 18th century, difficulties arose from the shortage of good farmland, periodic money problems, and downward price pressures in the export market. In agriculture, there was a shift from grain to animal products. The colonial government attempted to promote various commodities as export items from time to time, such as hemp, potash, and lumber, in order to bolster its economy and improve its balance of trade with Great Britain.

Connecticut's domestic architecture included a wide variety of house forms. They generally reflected the dominant English heritage and architectural tradition.

In Spanish: Provincia de Connecticut para niños

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The Province of Pennsylvania, also known as the Pennsylvania Colony, was founded in English North America by William Penn on March 4, 1681 as dictated in a royal charter granted by King Charles II. The name Pennsylvania, which translates roughly as "Penn's Woods", was created by combining the Penn surname (in honor of William's father, Admiral Sir William Penn) with the Latin word sylvania, meaning "forest land." The Province of Pennsylvania was one of the two major Restoration colonies, the other being the Province of Carolina. The proprietary colony's charter remained in the hands of the Penn family until the American Revolution, when the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was created and became one of the original thirteen states.

The province was divided first into 5 counties, plus the three "lower counties on Delaware Bay." The easternmost, Bucks County, extended northwest from Bensalem all the way to what is currently Bradford County, and included not only present-day Bucks County, but also the Poconos, the Lehigh Valley, and Carbon and part of Schuylkill County. Philadelphia County is present-day Philadelphia City (which also happens to be its own county). Montgomery County was west of Bucks and northwest of Philadelphia, and extended along the Schuylkill River to the area presently known as Minersville, in Schuylkill County. Chester County extended along the southern border of Pennsylvania (the Mason-Dixon line) from Marcus Hook to the western border of the province. The remainder of the province, which is now North Central and Northwestern Pennsylvania, was part of an enlarged Northumberland County (Northumberland County presently sits between Harrisburg and Wilkes-Barre along the Susquehanna River).

Lower Counties

"The lower counties on Delaware," a separate colony within the province, constituted the same three counties that constitute the present State of Delaware: New Castle, the northernmost, Sussex, the southernmost, and Kent, which fell between New Castle and Sussex County. Their borders remain unchanged to this day.

Religious freedom and prosperity

William Penn and his fellow Quakers heavily imprinted their religious values on the early Pennsylvanian government. The Charter of Privileges extended religious freedom to everyone monotheists and government was initially open to all Christians. Until the French and Indian War Pennsylvania had no military, few taxes and no public debt. It also encouraged the rapid growth of Philadelphia into America's most important city, and of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country hinterlands, where German (or "Deutsch") religions and political refugees prospered on the fertile soil and spirit of cultural creativeness. Among the first groups were the Mennonites, who founded Germantown in 1683; and the Amish, who established the Northkill Amish Settlement in 1740. 1751 was an auspicious year for the colony. Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in the British American colonies, and The Academy and College of Philadelphia, the predecessor to the private University of Pennsylvania, both opened. Benjamin Franklin founded both of these institutions along with Philadelphia's Union Fire Company fifteen years earlier in 1736. Likewise in 1751, the Pennsylvania State House ordered a new bell which would become known as the Liberty Bell for the new bell tower being built in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia.

Relations with Native Americans

William Penn had mandated fair dealings with Native Americans. This led to significantly better relations with the local Native tribes (mainly the Lenape and Susquehanna) than most other colonies had. The Quakers had previously treated Indians with respect, bought land from them voluntarily, and had even representation of Indians and Whites on juries. According to Voltaire, the Shackamaxon Treaty was "the only treaty between Indians and Christians that was never sworn to and that was never broken." The Quakers also refused to provide any assistance to New England's Indian wars.

In 1737, the Colony exchanged a great deal of its political goodwill with the native Lenape for more land. The colonial administrators claimed that they had a deed dating to the 1680s in which the Lenape-Delaware had promised to sell a portion of land beginning between the junction of the Delaware River and Lehigh River (present Easton, Pennsylvania) "as far west as a man could walk in a day and a half." This purchase has become known as the Walking Purchase. Although the document was most likely a forgery, the Lenape did not realize that. Provincial Secretary James Logan set in motion a plan that would grab as much land as they could possibly get and hired the three fastest runners in the colony to run out the purchase on a trail which had been cleared by other members of the colony beforehand. The pace was so intense that only one runner actually completed the "walk," covering an astonishing 70 miles (110 km). This netted the Penns 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km ²) of land in what is now northeastern Pennsylvania, an area roughly equivalent to the size of the state of Rhode Island in the purchase. The area of the purchase covers all or part of what are now Pike, Monroe, Carbon, Schuylkill, Northampton, Lehigh and Bucks counties. The Lenape tribe fought for the next 19 years to have the treaty annulled, but to no avail. The Lenape-Delaware were forced into the Shamokin and Wyoming Valleys, which were already overcrowded with other displaced tribes.

Limits on further settlement

As the colony grew, colonists and British military forces came into confrontation with Natives in the Western half of the state. Britain fought for control of the neighboring Ohio Country with France during the French and Indian War, and following the British victory the territory was formally ceded to them in 1763 and became part of the British Empire.

With the war just over and Pontiac's War beginning, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 banned colonization beyond the Appalachian Mountains in an effort to prevent settlers settling lands which the Native Americans considered their own. This proclamation affected Pennsylvanians and Virginians the most, as they had been racing towards the lands surrounding Fort Pitt (modern-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).

Famous colonial Pennsylvanians

Benjamin Franklin moved to Philadelphia at age 17.5 in 1723; during his later years he was Pennsylvania's most famous citizen. Among his accomplishments was founding in 1751 The Academy and College of Philadelphia, the predecessor to the private University of Pennsylvania. Franklin was also a strong advocate for a state militia, creating his own extra-legal militia when the state assembly would not during King George's War.

Thomas McKean was born in New London, Pennsylvania. He was an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the second President of the U.S. Congress under the Articles of Confederation, Acting President of Delaware, and Chief Justice and Governor of Pennsylvania.

Gouverneur Morris, one of the leading minds of the American Revolution, lived in New York City during most of the colonial period, but moved to Philadelphia to work as a lawyer and merchant during the Revolution.

Robert Morris moved to Philadelphia around 1749 at about age 14. He was known as the Financier of the Revolution because of his role in securing financial assistance for the American Colonial side in the Revolutionary War. In 1921, Robert Morris University was founded and named after him.

Thomas Paine emigrated to Philadelphia in 1774 at Benjamin Franklin's urging. His tract, Common Sense, published in 1776, was arguably the most famous and influential argument for the Revolution. He was also the first to publicly champion the phrase "United States of America."

William Penn was the colony's founder and son of naval Admiral Sir William Penn.

Arthur St. Clair moved to Ligonier Valley, Pennsylvania in 1764. He served as a judge in colonial Pennsylvania, a general in the Continental Army, and a President under the Articles of Confederation.

James Wilson moved to Philadelphia in 1765 and became a lawyer. He signed the Declaration of Independence and wrote or worked on many of the most difficult compromises in the U.S. Constitution, including the Three-Fifths Compromise, which defined slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of census-taking, number of members to be elected to U. S. House of Representatives, and government appropriations.

Peggy Shippen was the daughter of prominent Philadelphia merchant Edward Shippen and wife of Benedict Arnold.

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The Province of Pennsylvania, also known as the Pennsylvania Colony, was founded in English North America by William Penn on March 4, 1681 as dictated in a royal charter granted by King Charles II.

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Delaware Colony in the North American Middle Colonies consisted of land on the west bank of the Delaware River Bay. In the early 17th century the area was inhabited by Lenape and possibly the Assateague tribes of Native Americans. The first European settlers were Swedes, who established the colony New Sweden at Fort Christina at present day Wilmington, in 1638. The Dutch captured the colony in 1655 and annexed it to New Netherland to the north. The English took control from the Dutch in 1664, and in 1682, William Penn, the Quaker Proprietor of Pennsylvania to the north, leased "the three lower counties on the Delaware River" from James, the Duke of York (future King James II).

The Lower Counties of Delaware were governed as part of Pennsylvania from 1682 until 1701, when the Lower Counties petitioned for and were granted an independent colonial legislature; the two colonies shared the same governor until 1776. The English colonists who settled Delaware were mainly Quakers. In the first half of the 18th century, New Castle became (with Philadelphia) the main port of entry to the new world for a quarter of a million Protestant immigrants from the north of Ireland (referred to as "Scotch-Irish" in America and "Ulster Scots" in Northern Ireland). Delaware had no established religion. With the start of the American Revolutionary War, Delaware's assembly voted to break all ties with both Great Britain and Pennsylvania, forming the state of Delaware.

Dutch and Swedish settlement

From the early Dutch settlement in 1631 to the colony's rule by Pennsylvania in 1682, the land that later became the U.S. state of Delaware changed hands many times. Because of this, Delaware became a very heterogeneous society made up of individuals who were both religiously and culturally diverse.

The first European exploration of what would become known as the Delaware Valley was made by the Dutch ship under the command of Henry Hudson in 1609, during a voyage to locate the Northwest Passage to Asia. Hudson sailed into what now is the Delaware Bay. He would name it the South River, but this would later change after Samuel Argall discovered the river in 1610 after being blown off course. Argall would later rename the river Delaware, after Thomas West, Lord De La Warr, the second governor of Virginia. Follow-up expeditions by Cornelius May in 1613 and Cornelius Hendrickson in 1614 mapped the shoreline of what would become Delaware for inclusion in the New Netherland colony. Initial Dutch settlement was centered up river at Fort Nassau at Big Timber Creek south of what is now Gloucester City, New Jersey.

Neither the Dutch nor the English showed any early interest in establishing any kind of settlement on this land. The first true attempt to settle Europeans in the territories that would become the State of Delaware was not made until 1629 when agents of the Dutch West India Company Gillis Hossitt and Jacob Jansz arrived to negotiate with the Native Americans to "purchase" land for a colony. (It was a rule among the Dutch that Native American land must always be purchased and never seized by force, but as the concept of land ownership was alien to the Americans, there was a great deal of cultural confusion attached to the transactions with the Dutch "payments" taken for gifts in keeping with Native custom.) Hossitt and Jansz secured a treaty granting the Dutch a parcel of land running along the shore eight Dutch miles long and half a Dutch mile deep (roughly 29 by just under 2 US miles), nearly coincidental with the coast of modern Sussex and Kent counties in Delaware.

In 1631 the Dutch sent a group of twenty-eight men to build a fort inside Cape Henlopen on Lewes Creek to establish the Zwaanendael Colony. This first colony was established to take advantage of the large whale population and produce whale oil. A cultural misunderstanding with the Native Americans led to the massacre of the initial 28 colonists before a year was out. Patroon David Pietersz. de Vries arrived shortly thereafter with an additional 50 settlers. Although he concluded a treaty with the Indians, deVries, his partners in Holland, and the Dutch West India Company decided the location was too dangerous for an immediate reattempt and the additional settlers were landed in New Amsterdam (New York) instead.

In March 1638, the Swedish colony of New Sweden became the first permanent European settlement in Delaware. The Kalmar Nyckel anchored at a rocky point on the Minquas Kill that is known today as Swedes' Landing (in Wilmington, Delaware.) The New Sweden Company was organized and overseen by Clas Larsson Fleming, a Swedish admiral and administrator. Samuel Blommaert, a Flemish director of the Dutch West India Company who had grown frustrated with the company's policies assisted the fitting-out The expedition was led, and had been instigated by Peter Minuit, the founding governor of New Netherland who had been dismissed by the Dutch West India Company which operated the colony as a concession. Minuit resented the company and was well aware of the spareness of Dutch occupation along the Zuyd (Delaware) river valley. Like the Dutch colony it aimed to squat, New Sweden was a multicultural affair, with Finns, Dutch, Walloons (Belgians) and Germans as well as Swedes among the settlers.

The first outpost of the Swedish settlement was named Fort Christina (now Wilmington) after Queen Christina of Sweden. Governor Johan Björnsson Printz administered the colony from 1643 to 1653. He was succeeded by Johan Classon Risingh, the last governor of New Sweden. The Dutch had never accepted the Swedish colony as legitimate and the struggle between the forces of the Dutch West India Company and the officials and backers of New Sweden was on going. In 1651, New Netherland Governor Peter Stuyvesant had removed Fort Nassau and had it reassembled down river of Fort Christina as Fort Casimir, effectively encircling the Swedish colony. Fort Beversreede, a short-lived attempt to establish a foothold at the end of the Great Minquas Path (in modern Philadelphia) was abandoned. Three years later, the New Sweden colony attacked and seized the outpost, renaming it Fort Trinity. The struggle finally came to an end in September 1655. With the Second Great Northern War raging in Europe, Stuyvesant assembled a sufficient army and naval squadron to capture the Swedish forts, thus re-establishing control of the colony. Fort Casimir/Trinity was again renamed as New Amstel (later translated to New Castle) was made the center for fur trading and the colony's administration headquarters and the area's European population began to boom.

English conquest

In 1664, after Colonel Richard Nicolls captured New Amsterdam, Robert Carr was sent to the Delaware River. He took over New Amstel, pillaging it and brutally maltreating its settlers, some of whom he sold into slavery in Virginia. Carr translated the name from Dutch into English and it has been known since as New Castle. Carr and his troops continued down the shore, ravaging and burning settlements, including the famous Mennonite utopian community of Pieter Corneliszoon Plockhoy near present-day Lewes, Delaware, which was utterly destroyed. This effectively ended the Dutch rule of the colony and, for that matter, ended their claims to any land in colonial North America. Delaware was thenceforth claimed by New York under a Deputy of the Duke of York from 1664 to 1682, but not actually held in the Duke's possession nor his colonists, a situation taken advantage of by the proprietors of Maryland.

Durham County, Maryland

Between 1669 and 1672, Delaware was an incorporated county under the Province of Maryland. When the Duke of York made use of his charter on behalf of courtier William Penn, through conveyances made by the governor of New York, there was a brief conflict of interest between the Catholic, Tory and whose son was likewise a sometime Jacobite sympathizer Lord Baltimore with their friend the aforesaid Duke, but this was a hard fought court battle subsequently relegated to a proprietary dispute between the Calvert and Penn families, since both were held in favor by both the King and Prince James. The Mason-Dixon line is said to have legally resolved vague outlines in the overlap between Maryland and Pennsylvania, which pretty much awarded Delaware to Pennsylvania, although Delaware would eventually prove too independent for legislation north of New Castle (as well as that from the southerly Chesapeake Bay), leading to the separation from Pennsylvania and unique pioneer status as America's first state, tied to neither province's destiny.

New Castle, Kent, and Sussex Counties, Pennsylvania

The area now known as Delaware became owned by William Penn, the Quaker owner of Pennsylvania. In contemporary documents from the early Revolutionary period, the area is generally referred to as "The Three Lower Counties on the Delaware River" ( Lower Counties on Delaware) or by the names of the three counties, all of which retained linguistic and cultural connections to those of Maryland; New Castle, which related well to North East England's Newcastle as the defunct Durham County, Maryland (both Newcastle and Durham were relatively close to the Calvert regional identity as that of Northern England-and as landlords in County Longford, of the Irish Midlands, their barony shared some characteristics with the earlier English Catholic plantation by Mary I of England and Philip II of Spain in Queen's and King's counties), while Kent was contiguous with neighboring Kent County, Maryland and Sussex generally held a similar origin to Sussex County, Virginia, being the furthest removed from Penn's colony. The term "Lower Counties" refers to the fact that they were below the fall line, or farther downstream, on the Delaware River than the counties constituting and integrally within Pennsylvania proper, such as Philadelphia, Chester and Bucks counties.

After William Penn was granted the province of Pennsylvania by King Charles II in 1681, he asked for and later received the lands of Delaware from the Duke of York. Penn had a very hard time governing Delaware because the economy and geology were largely the same as those of the Chesapeake. He attempted to merge the governments of Pennsylvania and the lower counties of Delaware. Representatives from both areas clashed heavily and in 1701 Penn agreed to having two separate assemblies. Delawareans would meet in New Castle and Pennsylvanians would gather in Philadelphia. Delaware, like Philadelphia and unlike Maryland, continued to be a melting pot of sorts and was home to Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and French, in addition to the English, who constituted the dominant culture.

Other sources

Johnson Amandus. The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware, 1638-1664 (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1911)

Weslager, C. A. A Man and His Ship: Peter Minuit and the Kalmar Nyckel ( Kalmar Nyckel Foundation. Wilmington, Delaware. 1989)

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The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S. state of Maryland. Its first settlement and capital was St. Mary's City, in the southern end of St. Mary's County, which is a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay and is also bordered by four tidal rivers.

The province began as a proprietary colony of the English Lord Baltimore, who wished to create a haven for English Catholics in the new world at the time of the European wars of religion. Although Maryland was an early pioneer of religious toleration in the English colonies, religious strife among Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics, and Quakers was common in the early years, and Puritan rebels briefly seized control of the province. In 1689, the year following the Glorious Revolution, John Coode led a rebellion that removed Lord Baltimore from power in Maryland. Power in the colony was restored to the Baltimore family in 1715 when Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, insisted in public that he was a Protestant.

Origins in the 17th Century

Founding charter

The Catholic George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, (1579-1632), former Secretary of State to His Majesty, King Charles I, wished to create a haven for English Catholics in the New World. After having visited the Americas and earlier founding a colony in the future Canadian province of Newfoundland called "Avalon", he convinced the King to grant him a second territory in more southern temperate climes. Upon Baltimore's death in 1632 the grant was transferred to his eldest son Cecil.

On June 20, 1632 Charles I of England granted the original charter for Maryland, a proprietary colony of about twelve million acres (49,000 km²), to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore. Some historians view this grant as a form of compensation for Calvert's father's having been stripped of his title of Secretary of State upon announcing his Roman Catholicism in 1625. The charter offered no guidelines on religion, although it was assumed that Catholics would not be molested in the new colony. The charter had originally been granted to Calvert's father, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, but the 1st Baron Baltimore died before it could be executed, so it was granted to his son instead.

Whatever the reason for granting the colony specifically to Baltimore, however, the King had practical reasons to create a colony north of the Potomac in 1632. The colony of New Netherland begun by England's great imperial rival in this era, the United Provinces specifically claimed the Delaware River valley and was vague about its border with Virginia. Charles rejected all the Dutch claims on the Atlantic seaboard, but was anxious to bolster English claims by formally occupying the territory. The new colony was named after the devoutly Catholic Henrietta Maria of France, the Queen Consort.

Colonial Maryland was considerably larger than the present-day state of Maryland. The original charter granted the Calverts an imprecisely defined territory north of Virginia and south of the 40th parallel, comprising perhaps as much as 12 million acres (49,000 km²).

Early settlement

In Maryland, Baltimore sought to create a haven for English Catholics and to demonstrate that Catholics and Protestants could live together peacefully, even issuing the Act Concerning Religion in matters of religion. Cecil Calvert was himself a convert to Catholicism, a considerable political setback for a nobleman in 17th century England, where Roman Catholics could easily be considered enemies of the crown and potential traitors to their country. Like other aristocratic proprietors, he also hoped to turn a profit on the new colony.

Of the 200 or so initial settlers who traveled to Maryland on the ships Ark and Dove, the majority were Protestant. On November 22, 1633, Lord Baltimore sent the first settlers to the new colony, and after a long voyage with a stopover to resupply in Barbados, the Ark and the Dove landed on March 25, 1634 (thereafter celebrated as "Maryland Day"), at Blackistone Island, thereafter known as St. Clement's Island, off the northern shore of the Potomac River, upstream from its confluence with the Chesapeake Bay and Point Lookout. The new settlers were led by Lord Baltimore's younger brother Leonard Calvert, whom Baltimore had delegated to serve as governor of the new colony.

They made their first permanent settlement,

Here at St. Clement's Island, they raised a large cross, and led by Father Andrew White, celebrated Mass. The new settlement was called "St. Mary's City" and it became the first capitol of Maryland, and remained so for sixty years until 1695 when the colony's capital was moved north to the more central, newly established "Anne Arundel's Town (also briefly known as "Providence") and later renamed as " Annapolis".

More settlers soon followed and St. Mary's City. The tobacco crops that they had planned from the outset were very successful and made the new colony profitable very quickly. However, given the incidence of malaria and typhoid, life expectancy in Maryland was about 10 years less than in New England.

Relations with the Susquehannock

In 1642, the Province of Maryland declared war on the Susquehannock Indian nation (Conestoga peoples). The Susquehannock (with the help of the colony of New Sweden) defeated Maryland in 1644. As a result, the Conestoga traded almost exclusively with New Sweden to the north while the colony was young. The Susquehannocks remained in an intermittent state of war with Maryland until a peace treaty was concluded in 1652, but would become allies in the following decades. Records from this era are poor and accounts of these early conflicts are incomplete.

Border disputes

With Virginia

In 1629, George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore "driven by 'the sacred duty of finding a refuge for his Roman Catholic brethren", applied to Charles I for a royal charter to establish a colony south of Virginia. He also wanted a share of the fortunes being made in tobacco in Virginia, and hoped to recoup some of the financial losses he had sustained in his earlier colonial venture in Newfoundland.

In 1631, William Claiborne a Puritan from Virginia received a royal trading commission granting him the right to trade with the natives on all lands in the mid-Atlantic where there was not already a patent in effect. Claiborne established a trading post on sailed Kent Island on 28 May 1631.

Meanwhile, back in London, the Privy Council persuaded Sir George Calvert that he be granted a charter for lands north of the Virginia colony, in order to put pressure on the Dutch settlements further north along the Delaware and Hudson Rivers. Calvert agreed, but died in 1632 before the charter was formally signed by King Charles I. The Royal Grant and Charter for the new colony of Maryland was then granted to his son, Cecilius Calvert, on 20 June 1632. This place Claiborne on Calvert land. Claiborne refused to recognize acknowledge Lord Baltimore's charter and rights.

With Pennsylvania

Main page: Penn-Calvert boundary dispute

The border dispute with Pennsylvania continued and led to Cresap's War, a conflict between settlers from Pennsylvania and Maryland fought in the 1730s. Hostilities erupted in 1730 with a series of violent incidents prompted by disputes over property rights and law enforcement, and escalated through the first half of the decade, culminating in the deployment of military forces by Maryland in 1736 and by Pennsylvania in 1737. The armed phase of the conflict ended in May 1738 with the intervention of King George II, who compelled the negotiation of a cease-fire. A provisional agreement had been established in 1732.

With New York

In 1672, Lord Baltimore declared Maryland included the settlement of Whorekills on the west shore of the Delaware Bay, an area under the jurisdiction of the Province of New York (as the British had renamed New Netherland after taking possession in 1664). A force was dispatched which attacked and captured this settlement. New York could not immediately respond because New York was soon recaptured by the Dutch. This settlement was restored to the Province of New York when New York was recaptured from the Dutch in November, 1674.

Religious conflict

Although Maryland was an early pioneer of religious toleration in the British colonies, religious strife among Anglicans, Puritans, Roman Catholics, and Quakers was common in the early years, and Puritan rebels briefly seized control of the province. In 1644 the dispute with William Claiborne led to armed conflict. Claiborne seized Kent Island while his associate, the pro-Parliament Puritan Richard Ingle took over St. Mary's. Both used religion as a tool to gain popular support. From 1644 to 1646, the so-called "Plundering Time" was a period of civil unrest aggravated by the tensions of the English Civil War (1641-1651). Leonard Calvert returned from exile with troops, recaptured St. Mary's City, and eventually restored order.

In 1649 Maryland passed the Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, a law mandating religious tolerance for trinitarian Christians. Passed on September 21, 1649 by the assembly of the Maryland Colony, it was the first law requiring religious tolerance in the English North American colonies. In 1654, after the Third English Civil War (1649-1651), Parliamentary ( Puritan) forces assumed control of Maryland for a time.

The Protestant Revolution of 1689

Main page: Protestant Revolution (Maryland)

After this "Protestant Revolution" in Maryland, Darnall was forced, like many other Catholics, to maintain a secret chapel in his home in order to celebrate the Roman Catholic Mass. In 1704, an Act was passed "to prevent the growth of Popery in this Province", preventing Catholics from holding political office.

Full religious toleration would not be restored in Maryland until the American Revolution, when Darnall's great-grandson Charles Carroll of Carrollton, arguably the wealthiest Catholic in Maryland, signed the American Declaration of Independence.

Plantations and economy

Early settlements and populations centers tended to cluster around the rivers and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake Bay. In the 17th century, most Marylanders lived in rough conditions on small farms. While they raised a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, and livestock, the main cash crop was tobacco, which soon dominated the province's economy.

The Province of Maryland developed along lines very similar to those of Virginia. Tobacco was used as money, and the colonial legislature was obliged to pass a law requiring tobacco planters to raise a certain amount of corn as well, in order to ensure that the colonists would not go hungry. Like Virginia, Maryland's economy quickly became centered around the farming of tobacco for sale in Europe. The need for cheap labor to help with the growth of tobacco, and later with the mixed farming economy that developed when tobacco prices collapsed, led to a rapid expansion of indentured servitude and, later, forcible immigration and enslavement of Africans.

By 1730 there were public tobacco warehouses every fourteen miles. Bonded at £1,000 sterling, each inspector received from £25 to £60 as annual salary. Four hogsheads of 950 pounds were considered a ton for London shipment. Ships from English ports did not need port cities; they called at the wharves of warehouses or plantations along the rivers for tobacco and the next year returned with goods the planters had ordered from the shops of London.

Outside the plantations, much land was operated by independent farmers who rented from the proprietors, or owned it outright. They emphasized subsistence farming to grow food for their large families. Many of the Irish and Scottish immigrants specialized in rye-whiskey making, which they sold to obtain cash.

The 18th Century

Maryland developed into a plantation colony by the 18th century. In 1700 there were about 25,000 people and by 1750 that had grown more than 5 times to 130,000. By 1755, about 40% of Maryland's population was black. Maryland planters also made extensive use of indentured servants and penal labor. An extensive system of rivers facilitated the movement of produce from inland plantations and farms to the Atlantic coast for export. Baltimore, on Chesapeake Bay, was the second-most important port in the 18th-century South, after Charleston, South Carolina.

Dr. Alexander Hamilton (1712 - 1756) was a Scottish-born doctor and writer who lived and worked in Annapolis. Leo Lemay says his 1744 travel diary Gentleman's Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton is "the best single portrait of men and manners, of rural and urban life, of the wide range of society and scenery in colonial America."

In the late colonial period, the southern and eastern portions of the Province continued in their tobacco economy, but as the American Revolution approached, northern and central Maryland increasingly became centers of wheat production. This helped drive the expansion of interior farming towns like Frederick and Maryland's major port city of Baltimore.

The Abbé Claude C. Robin, a chaplain in the army of General Rochambeau, who travelled through Maryland during the Revolutionary War, described the lifestyle enjoyed by families of wealth and status in the colony:

"[Maryland houses] are large and spacious habitations, widely separated, composed of a number of buildings and surrounded by plantations extending farther than the eye can reach, cultivated...by unhappy black men whom European avarice brings hither...Their furniture is of the most costly wood, and rarest marbles, enriched by skilful and artistic work. Their elegant and light carriages are drawn by finely bred horses, and driven by richly apparelled slaves."

In the later colonial period, the southern and eastern portions of the Province continued in their tobacco economy, heavily dependent on slave labor, but as the revolution approached, northern and central Maryland increasingly became centers of wheat production. This helped drive the expansion of interior farming towns like Frederick and Maryland's major port city of Baltimore.

The American Revolution

Main page: Maryland in the American Revolution

Up to the time of the American Revolution, the Province of Maryland was one of two colonies that remained an English proprietary colony, Pennsylvania being the other. Maryland declared independence from Britain in 1776, with Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton signing the Declaration of Independence for the colony. In the 1776-77 debates over the Articles of Confederation, Maryland delegates led the party that insisted that states with western land claims cede them to the Confederation government, and in 1781, Maryland became the last state to ratify the Articles of Confederation. It accepted the United States Constitution more readily, ratifying it on April 28, 1788.

Maryland also gave up some territory to create the new District of Columbia after the American Revolution.

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The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S. state of Maryland. Its first settlement and capital was St.

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The Province of New York (1664-1776) was a British crown colony that originally included all of the present U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Vermont, along with inland portions of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine, as well as eastern Pennsylvania. The majority of this land was soon reassigned by the Crown, leaving territory that included the valleys of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, and Vermont. The territory of western New York was Iroquois land, also disputed between the English colonies and New France, and that of Vermont was disputed with the Province of New Hampshire.

The province resulted from the Dutch Republic surrender of Provincie Nieuw-Nederland to the Kingdom of England in 1664. Immediately after, the province was renamed for James, Duke of York, brother of Charles II of England. The colony was one of the Middle Colonies, and ruled at first directly from England.

The New York Provincial Congress of local representatives declared itself the government on May 22, 1775, first referred to the " State of New York" in 1776, and ratified the New York State Constitution in 1777. While the British regained New York City during the American Revolutionary War using it as its military and political base of operations in North America, and a British governor was technically in office, much of the remainder of the former colony was held by the Patriots. British claims on any part of New York ended with the Treaty of Paris of 1783. After the American Revolution, the former colony became the State of New York.

This British crown colony was established upon the former Dutch colony of New Netherland, with its core being York Shire, in what today is typically known as Downstate New York.

See also: List of counties in New York and List of former United States counties

The Province of New York was divided into twelve counties on November 1, 1683, by New York Governor Thomas Dongan:

On March 24, 1772:

In 1617 officials of the Dutch West India Company in New Netherland created a settlement at present-day Albany, and in 1624 founded New Amsterdam, on Manhattan Island. New Amsterdam surrendered to Colonel Richard Nicholls on August 27, 1664; he renamed it New York. On September 24 Sir George Carteret accepted the capitulation of the garrison at Fort Orange, which he called Albany, after another of the Duke of York's titles. The capture was confirmed by the Treaty of Breda in July 1667.

Easing the transition to British rule, the Articles of Capitulation guaranteed certain rights to the Dutch; among these were: liberty of conscience in divine worship and church discipline, the continuation of their own customs concerning inheritances, and the application of Dutch law to bargains and contracts made prior to the capitulation.

Proprietary government (1664-1685)

In 1664, James, Duke of York was granted a Royal colony which included New Netherland and present-day Maine. The New Netherland claim included western parts of present-day Massachusetts (to an extent that varied depending on whether the reference was the States General claim of all lands as far east as Narragansett Bay or the Treaty of Hartford negotiated by the English and Dutch colonies in 1650 but not recognized by either the Dutch or English governments) putting the new province in conflict with the Massachusetts charter. In general terms, the charter was equivalent to a conveyance of land conferring on him the right of possession, control, and government, subject only to the limitation that the government must be consistent with the laws of England. The Duke of York never visited his colony and exercised little direct control of it. He elected to administer his government through governors, councils, and other officers appointed by himself. No provision was made for an elected assembly.

In 1665, the Province of New Jersey was created from a portion of New York, but the border was not finalized until 1765 (see New York-New Jersey Line War). In 1667, territories between the Byram River and Connecticut River were split off to become the western half of Connecticut.

The first governor Richard Nicolls was known for writing "The Duke's Laws" which served as the first compilation of English laws in colonial New York. Nicholls returned to England after an administration of three years, much of which was taken up in confirming the ancient Dutch land grants. Francis Lovelace was next appointed Governor and held the position from May 1667 until the return of the Dutch in July 1673. A Dutch fleet recaptured New York and held it until it was traded to the English by the Treaty of Westminster. A second grant was obtained by the Duke of York in July 1674 to perfect his title.

Upon conclusion of the peace in 1674, the Duke of York appointed Sir Edmund Andros as Governor of his territories in America. Governor Edmund Andros in 1674 said "permit all persons of what religion soever, quietly to inhabit within the precincts of your jurisdiction" Nonetheless, he made the Quakers of West Jersey pay toll on the Delaware, but they applied to England and were redressed. He was followed by Colonel Thomas Dongan in 1682. Dongan was empowered, on the advice of William Penn, to summon "...a general assembly of all the freeholders, by such persons they should choose to represent them to consult with you and said council what laws are fit and necessary to be made..."

A colonial Assembly was created in October 1683. New York was the last of the English colonies to have an assembly. The assembly passed the Province of New York constitution on October 30, the first of its kind in the colonies. This constitution gave New Yorkers more rights than any other group of colonists including the protection from taxation without representation. On November 1, 1683, the government was reorganized, and the state was divided into twelve counties, each of which was subdivided into towns. Ten of those counties still exist (see above), but two ( Cornwall and Dukes) were in territory purchased by the Duke of York from the Earl of Stirling, and are no longer within the territory of the State of New York, having been transferred by treaty to Massachusetts. While the number of counties has been increased to 62, the pattern still remains that a town in New York State is a subdivision of a county, similar to New England.

An act of the assembly in 1683 naturalized all those of foreign nations then in the colony professing Christianity. To encourage immigration, it also provided that foreigners professing Christianity may, after their arrival, be naturalized if they took the oath of allegiance as required.

The Duke's Laws established a non-denominational state church.

The British replaced the Dutch in their alliance with the Iroquois against New France, with an agreement called the Covenant Chain.

Royal province (1686-1775)

On February 6, 1685, the Duke of York was crowned in London as King James II, and his personally owned colony became a Royal province. In May 1688 the province was made part of the Dominion of New England. However, in April 1689, when news arrived that King James had been overthrown in the Glorious Revolution, Bostonians overthrew their government and imprisoned Dominion Governor Edmund Andros. The province of New York rebelled in May in what is known as Leisler's Rebellion. King William's War with France began during which the French attacked Schenectady. In July, New York participated in an abortive attack on Montreal and Quebec. A new governor Henry Sloughter arrived in March 1691. He had Jacob Leisler arrested, tried, and executed.

New York's charter was re-enacted in 1691 and was the constitution of the province until the creation of the State of New York.

The first newspaper appeared weekly in 1725.

During Queen Anne's War with France from 1702 to 1713, the province had little involvement with the military operations, but benefited from being a supplier to the British fleet. New York militia participated in two abortive attacks on Quebec in 1709 and 1711.

Black slaves

In the 1690s, New York City was the largest importer of the colonies of slaves and a supply port for pirates. The black population became a major element in New York City, and on large upstate farms.

New York City sold these slaves using slave markets, giving slaves to the highest bidder at an auction.

With its shipping and trades, New York had use for skilled Africans as artisans and domestic servants. Two notable slave revolts occurred in New York City in 1712 and 1741.

The numbers of slaves imported to New York increased dramatically from the 1720s through 1740s. By the 17th century, they established the African burial ground in Lower Manhattan, which was used through 1812. It was discovered nearly two centuries later during excavation before the construction of the Ted Weiss Federal Building at 290 Broadway. Historians estimated 15,000-20,000 Africans and African Americans had been buried in the approximately 8 acres surrounding there. Because of the extraordinary find, the government commissioned a memorial at the site, where the National Park Service has an interpretive center. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark and National Monument. Excavation and study of the remains has been described as the "most important historic urban archaeological project undertaken in the United States."

When the British took over, the great majority of Dutch families remained, with the exception of government officials and soldiers. However new Dutch arrivals were very few. While the Netherlands was a small country, the Dutch Empire was quite large, meaning that emigrants leaving the mother country had a wide variety of choices under full Dutch control. The major Dutch cities were centers of high culture, but they sent few immigrants. Most new arrivals in the 17th century had been farmers from remote villages who on arrival in New Netherland scattered into widely separated villages that had little cross contact with each other. Even inside a settlement, different Dutch groups had minimal interaction. With very few new arrivals, the result was an increasingly traditional system cut off from the forces for change . The folk maintained their popular culture, revolving around their language and their Calvinist religion. The Dutch brought along their own folklore, most famously Sinterklaas (the foundation of the modern day Santa Claus). They maintained their distinctive clothing, and food preferences. They introduced some new foods to America, including beets, endive, spinach, parsley, and cookies. After the British takeover, the rich Dutch families in Albany and New York City emulated the English elite. They purchased English furniture, silverware, crystal, and jewelry. They were proud of the Dutch language, which was strongly reinforced through the church, but they were much slower than the Yankees in setting up schools for their children. They finally did set up Queens College (now Rutgers University) in New Jersey. They published no newspapers, and published no books and only a handful of religious tracts annually.

Nearly 2,800 Palatine German emigrants were transported to New York by Queen Anne's government in ten ships in 1710, the largest single group of immigrants before the Revolutionary War. By comparison, Manhattan then had only 6,000 people. Initially the Germans were employed in the production of naval stores and tar along the Hudson River near Peekskill. In 1723 they were allowed to settle in the central Mohawk Valley west of Schenectady as a buffer against the Native Americans and the French. They also settled in areas such as Schoharie and Cherry Valley. Many became tenant farmers or squatters. They kept to themselves, married their own, spoke German, attended Lutheran churches, and retained their own customs and foods. They emphasized farm ownership. Some mastered English to become conversant with local legal and business opportunities. They tolerated slavery (although few were rich enough to own a slave).

King George's War

Main page: King George's War

This province, as a British colony, fought against the French during King George's War. The assembly was determined to control expenditures for this war and only weak support was given. When the call came for New York to help raise an expeditionary force against Louisburg, the New York assembly refused to raise troops and only appropriated a token three thousand pounds. The assembly was opposed to a significant war effort because it would interrupt trade with Quebec and would result in higher taxes. The French raid on Saratoga in 1745 destroyed that settlement, killing and capturing more than one hundred people. After this attack the assembly was more generous and raised 1,600 men and forty thousand pounds.

French and Indian War

Upstate New York was the scene of fighting during the French and Indian War, with British and French forces contesting control of Lake Champlain in association with Native American allies. Sir William Johnson, 1st Baronet, and other agents in upstate New York brought about the participation of the Iroquois. The French and their Indian allies laid siege to Fort William Henry at the southern end of Lake George in 1757. The British forces surrendered to the French, but many prisoners were then massacred by the Indians. Some prisoners had smallpox, and when Indians took the scalps to their home villages, they spread a disease that killed large numbers. In the end the British won the war and took over all of Canada, thereby ending French-sponsored Indian attacks.

One of the largest impressment operations occurred in New York City in the spring of 1757 when three thousand British troops cordoned off the city and impressed nearly eight hundred persons they found in taverns and other gathering places of sailors. New York City was the centre for privateering. Forty New York ships were commissioned as privateers in 1756 and in the spring of 1757 it was estimated the value of French prizes brought into New York City was two hundred thousand pounds. By 1759, the seas had been cleaned of French vessels and the privateers were diverted into trading with the enemy. The ending of the war caused a severe recession in New York.

Sir William Johnson, 1st Baronet, negotiated an end to Pontiac's Rebellion. He promoted the Proclamation of 1763 and the Treaty of Fort Stanwix to protect the Indians from further English settlement in their lands. The treaty established a boundary line along the West Branch Delaware River and the Unadilla River, with Iroquois lands to the west and colonial lands to the east.

Political parties

During the middle years of the 18th century, politics in New York revolved around the rivalry of two great families, the Livingstons and the De Lanceys. Both of these families had amassed considerable fortunes. New York City had an inordinate influence on New York politics because several of the assembly members lived in New York City rather than in their district. In the 1752 election, De Lanceys' relatives and close friends controlled 12 of the 27 seats in the assembly. The De Lanceys lost control of the assembly in the election of 1761. Governor Cadwallader Colden tried to organize a popular party to oppose the great families, thus earning the hatred of the city elite of both parties. The Livingstons looked to the imperial ties as a means of controlling the influence of James De Lancey. The De Lanceys regarded imperial ties to be a tool for personal advantage.

Parliament passed the Stamp Act 1765 to raise money from the colonies. New York had previously passed its own stamp act from 1756 to 1760 to raise money for the French and Indian war. The extraordinary response to the Stamp Act can only be explained by the build-up of antagonisms on local issues. New York was experiencing a severe recession from the effects of the end of the French and Indian war. The colonies were experiencing the effects of a very tight monetary policy caused by the trade deficit with Britain, a fiscal crisis in Britain restricting credit, and the Currency Act, which prevented the issuing of paper currency to provide liquidity.

From the outset, New York led the protests in the colonies. Both New York political factions opposed the Stamp Act of 1765. In October, at what became Federal Hall in New York City, representatives of several colonies met in the Stamp Act Congress to discuss their response. The New York assembly petitioned the British House of Commons on December 11, 1765, for the Americans' right of self taxation. In August, the intimidation and beating of stamp agents was widely reported. The New York stamp commissioner resigned his job.

The act went into effect on November 1. The day before, James De Lancey organized a meeting at Burns Tavern of New York City merchants, where they agreed to boycott all British imports until the Stamp Act was repealed. A leading moderate group opposing the Stamp Act were the local Sons of Liberty headed by Isaac Sears, John Lamb and Alexander McDougall. Historian Gary B. Nash wrote of what was called the "General Terror of November 1-4":

But New York's plebeian element was not yet satisfied. Going beyond the respectable leaders of the Sons of Liberty, the lower orders rampaged through the town for four days. Some two thousand strong, they threatened the homes of suspected sympathizers of British policy, attacked the house of the famously wealthy governor Cadwallader Colden, paraded his effigy around town, and built a monstrous bonfire in the Bowling Green into which the shouting crowd hurled the governor's luxurious two sleighs and horse-drawn coach.

Historian Fred Anderson contrasted the mob actions in New York with those in Boston. In Boston, after the initial unrest, local leaders such as the Loyal Nine (a precursor to the Sons of Liberty) were able to take control of the mob. In New York, however, the "mob was largely made up of seamen, most of whom lacked deep community ties and felt little need to submit to the authority of the city's shorebound radical leaders." The New York Sons of Liberty did not take control of the opposition until after November 1.

On November 1, the crowd destroyed a warehouse and the house of Thomas James, commander at Fort George. A few days later the stamps stored at Fort George were surrendered to the mob. Nash notes that, "whether the Sons of Liberty could control the mariners, lower artisans, and laborers remained in doubt," and "they came to fear the awful power of the assembled lower-class artisans and their maritime compatriots."

On January 7, 1766, the merchant ship Polly carrying stamps for Connecticut was boarded in New York City harbour and the stamps destroyed. Up to the end of 1765 the Stamp Act disturbances had largely been confined to New York City, but in January the Sons of Liberty also stopped the distribution of stamps in Albany.

In May 1766, when news arrived of the repeal of the Stamp Act the Sons of Liberty celebrated by the erection of a Liberty Pole. It became a rallying point for mass meetings and an emblem of the American cause. In June, two regiments of British regulars arrived in New York City and were quartered in the upper barracks. These troops cut down the liberty pole on August 10. A second and third pole were erected and also cut down. A fourth pole was erected and encased in iron to prevent similar action.

In 1766, widespread tenant uprisings occurred in the countryside north of New York City centered on the Livingston estates. They marched on New York City expecting the Sons of Liberty to support them. Instead the Sons of Liberty blocked the roads and the leader of the tenants was convicted of treason.

Quartering Act

In the last years of the French and Indian War London approved a policy of keeping twenty regiments in the colonies to police and defend the back country. The enabling legislation took the form of the Quartering Act which required colonial legislatures to provide quarters and supplies for the troops. The Quartering Act stirred little controversy and New Yorkers were ambivalent about the presence of the troops. The assembly had provided barracks and provisions every year since 1761. The tenant riots of 1766 showed the need for a police force in the colony. The Livingston controlled New York assembly passed a quartering bill in 1766 to provide barracks and provisions in New York City and Albany which satisfied most, but not all of the requirements of the Quartering Act. London suspended the assembly for failure to comply fully, and Governor Moore dissolved the House of Assembly, February 6, 1768. The next month New Yorkers went to the polls for a new assembly. In this election, with the Sons of Liberty support, the De Lancey faction gained seats, but not enough for a majority.

Townshend Acts

In 1768, a letter voted by the Massachusetts assembly called for the universal boycott of British imports in opposition to the Townshend Acts. In October, the merchants of New York City agreed on the condition that the merchants of Boston and Philadelphia also agreed. In December, the assembly passed a resolution which stated the colonies were entitled to self-taxation. Governor Moore declared the resolution repugnant to the laws of England and dissolved the assembly. The De Lancey faction, again with Sons of Liberty support, won a majority in the assembly.

In the spring of 1769, New York was in a depression from the recall of paper boycott and the British boycott. By the Currency Act New York was required to recall all paper money. London allowed the issuance of additional paper money, but the attached conditions were unsatisfactory. While New York was boycotting British imports, other colonies including Boston and Philadelphia were not. The De Lanceys tried to reach a compromise by passing a bill which allowed for the issuing of paper currency, of which half was for provisioning of the troops. Alexander McDougall, signed a 'Son of Liberty', issued a broadside entitled To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York which was an excellent piece of political propaganda denouncing the De Lanceys for betraying the liberties of the people by acknowledging the British power of taxation. The Sons of Liberty switched their allegiance from the De Lanceys to the Livingstons. Alexander McDougall was arrested for libel.

Conflict between the Sons of Liberty and the troops in New York City erupted with the Battle of Golden Hill on January 19, 1770, where troops cut down the fourth Liberty Pole which had been erected in 1767.

In July 1770, the merchants of New York City decided to resume trade with Britain when news arrived of Parliament's plan to repeal the Townshend Duties and to give permission for New York to issue some paper currency. The Sons of Liberty were strongly opposed to the resumption of trade. The merchants twice polled their members and went door to door polling residents of New York City and all polls were overwhelming in support of resumption of trade. This was perhaps the first public opinion poll in American history.

New York was peaceful after the repeal of the Townshend Act, but the economy of New York was still in a slump. In May 1773 the Parliament passed the Tea Act cutting the duty on tea and enabling the East India company to sell tea in the colonies cheaper than the smugglers could. This act primarily hurt the New York merchants and smugglers. The Sons of Liberty were the organizers of the opposition and in November 1773 they published Association of the Sons of Liberty of New York in which anyone who assisted in support of the act would be a "enemy to the liberties of America". As a result, the New York East India agents resigned. The New York assembly took no action in regard to the Sons of Liberty assumption of extra-legal powers.

The New York City Sons of Liberty learned of Boston's plan to stop the unloading of any tea and resolved to also follow this policy. Since the Association had not obtained the support they had expected, the Sons of Liberty were afraid that if the tea was landed the population would demand its distribution for retail.

In December, news arrived of the Boston Tea Party strengthened opposition. In April 1774, The boat Nancy arrived in New York harbor for repairs. The captain admitted that he had 18 chests of tea on board and he agreed that he would not attempt to have the tea landed, but the Sons of Liberty boarded the ship regardless and destroyed the tea.

Intolerable Acts

In January 1774, the Assembly created a Committee of Correspondence to correspond with other colonies in regard to the Intolerable Acts.

In May 1774 news arrived of the Boston Port Act which closed the port of Boston. The Sons of Liberty were in favor of resumption of a trade boycott with Britain, but there was strong resistance from the large importers. In May, a meeting in New York City was called in which members were selected for a Committee of Correspondence. The Committee of Fifty was formed which was dominated with moderates, the Sons of Liberty only obtained 15 members. Isaac Low was the chairman. Francis Lewis was added to create the Committee of Fifty-One. The group adopted a resolution which said Boston was "suffering in the defence of the rights of America" and proposed the formation of a Continental Congress. In July, the committee select five of their members as delegates to this congress. Some of the other counties also sent delegates to the First Continental Congress which was held in September. The New York delegates were unable to stop the adoption at the congress of the Continental Association. The association was generally ignored in New York.

In January and February 1775, of the New York Assembly voted down successive resolutions approving the proceedings of the First Continental Congress and refused to send delegates to the Second Continental Congress. New York was the only colonial assembly which did not approve the proceeds of the First Continental Congress. Opposition to the Congress revolved around the opinion that the provincial houses of assembly were the proper agencies to solicit redress for grievances. In March, the Assembly broke with the rest of the colonies and wrote a petition to London, but London rejected the petition because it contained claims about a lack of authority of the "parent state" to tax colonists, "which made it impossible" to accept. The Assembly last met on April 3, 1775.

Provincial Congress

In April 1775, the rebels formed the New York Provincial Congress as a replacement for the New York Assembly. News of the battle of Lexington and Concord reached New York on April 23, which stunned the city since there was a widely believed rumor that Parliament was to grant the colonies self-taxation. The Sons of Liberty led by Marinus Willett broke into the Arsenal at City Hall and removed 1,000 stand of arms. The armed citizens formed a voluntary corps to govern the city with Isaac Sears's house the de facto seat of government and militia headquarters. The crown-appointed New York executive council meet on April 24 and concluded that "we were unanimously of the opinion that we had no power to do anything." The British troops in New York City never left their barracks.

On October 19, 1775, Governor William Tryon was forced to leave New York City for a British warship offshore, ending any appearances of British rule of the colony as the Continental Congress ordered the arrest of anyone endangering the safety of the colony. In April 1776 Tryon officially dissolved the New York assembly.

New York was located in the Northern theatre of the American Revolutionary War. New York served as the launching point for the failed Invasion of Canada in 1775, the first major military operation of the newly formed Continental Army. General George Washington took the Continental Army from Boston after the British withdrew following the Fortification of Dorchester Heights, and brought it to New York City in 1776, correctly anticipating the British would return there.

The Fourth Provincial Congress convened in White Plains on July 9, 1776, and became known as the First Constitutional Convention. New York endorsed the Declaration of Independence the same day, and declared the independent state of New York. New York City celebrated by tearing down the statue of George III in Bowling Green. On July 10, 1776, the Fourth Provincial Congress changed its name to the Convention of Representatives of the State of New York, and "acts as legislature without an executive." While adjourned it left a Committee of Safety in charge. The New York state constitution was framed by a convention which assembled at White Plains on July 10, 1776, and after repeated adjournments and changes of location, it concluded in Kingston, New York on Sunday evening, April 20, 1777, when the new constitution was adopted with one dissenting vote. It had been drafted by John Jay, and was not submitted to the people for ratification. Under its provisions, the governor would be elected not appointed, voting restrictions were reduced, secret ballots were introduced, and civil rights were guaranteed. On July 30, 1777, George Clinton was inaugurated as the first Governor of New York at Kingston. On July 9, 1778, the State of New York signed the Articles of Confederation and officially became a part of the government of the United States of America, though it had been a part of the nation since it was declared in 1776 with signatories from New York.

The province was the scene of the largest battle of the entire war, and the first after the Declaration of Independence was signed. The British recaptured the city in September 1776 in the New York and New Jersey campaign, and placed the province under martial law under the command of James Robertson, though his effective authority did not extend far beyond the southern tip of Manhattan (then the extent of New York City). Tryon retained his title of governor, but with little power. David Mathews was Mayor for the duration of British occupation of New York until Evacuation Day. After its reoccupation, New York City became the headquarters for the British army in America, and the British political center of operations in North America. The British cut down the Liberty Pole in the common. Loyalist refugees flooded into the city raising its population to 33,000. Prison ships in Wallabout Bay held a large proportion of American soldiers and sailors being held prisoner by the British, and was where more Americans died than in all of the battles of the war, combined. The British retained control of New York City until Evacuation Day in November 1783, which was commemorated long afterward.

Structure of government

The governor of New York was royally appointed. The governor selected his Executive Council which served as the upper house. The governor and king had veto power over the assembly's bills. However, all bills were effective until royal disapproval had occurred which could take up to a year. During King George's War, the governor approved two assembly initiatives; that the colony's revenue be approved annually rather than every five years and that the assembly must approve the purpose of each allocation. Elections to the house of assembly were initially held whenever the governor pleased, but eventually a law was passed requiring an election at least once every seven years. New York City was the seat of government and where the New York assembly met.

Between 1692 and 1694 the governor of New York was also the governor of Pennsylvania. From 1698 to 1701 the governor was also the governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. From 1702 to 1738 he was also the governor of New Jersey.

Representation in the assembly in 1683 was six for Long Island, four for New York City, two for Kingston, two for Albany, one for each of Staten Island, Schenectady, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket and one for Pemequid on the Maine coast. In 1737, the assembly was expanded to 27 and in 1773 to 31.

Voters were required to have a £40 freehold, in addition to requirements related to age, sex, and religion. The £40 freehold requirement was often ignored. Jews were not allowed to vote between 1737 and 1747. In rural counties slightly more than half the males could vote. No secret ballot safeguarded the independence of the voters. The elections were held at the county town, under the supervision of the sheriff and sometimes at such short notice that many of the voting population could not get to the polls. The candidates were usually at the polls and the vote was taken by a show of hands unless this vote did not result in a clear winner.

The election for an open seat in the New York assembly, held on the Village Green inEastchester, Westchester County on October 29, 1733, is one of the better known political events in colonial America. Two hundred and seventy five years after the contest, historians continue to cite the election to advance various arguments about colonial life. One recent student used the election to argue for the persistent importance of monarchy in the outlook of colonists, while another scholar treated the voting as an important point in the development of political awareness among New York artisans. Many writers address the election, held at what is today St. Paul's Church National Historic Site, in Mt. Vernon, as part of the story of the printer John Peter Zenger, whose acquittal in a seditious libel case in 1735 is seen as a foundation of the free press in America. The first issue of Zenger's New York Weekly Journal carried a lengthy report on the famous election, producing one of the few complete accounts of a colonial election available to historians."

See List of colonial governors of New York

List of Attorneys General

Demographics

Upstate New York (as well as parts of present Ontario, Quebec, Pennsylvania and Ohio) were occupied by the Five Nations (after 1720 becoming Six Nations, when joined by Tuscarora) of the Iroquois Confederacy for at least a half millennium before the Europeans came.

In 1664, one quarter of the population of New York City was African American.

In 1690, the population of the province was 20,000, of which 6,000 were in New York City.

In 1698, the population of the province was 18,607. 14% of the population of New York City was black.

The slave population grew after Queen Anne's war. The percentage of blacks in New York City in 1731 and 1746 was 18% and 21% respectively.

In 1756, the population of the province was about 100,000 of which about 14,000 were blacks. Most of the blacks in New York at this time were slaves.

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The Province of New York (1664-1776) was a British crown colony that originally included all of the present U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Vermont, along with inland portions of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine, as well as eastern Pennsylvania.

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The Province of Georgia (also Georgia Colony) was one of the Southern colonies in British America. It was the last of the thirteen original American colonies established by Great Britain in what later became the United States. In the original grant, a narrow strip of the province extended to the Pacific Ocean.

The colony's corporate charter was granted to General James Oglethorpe on April 21, 1732, by George II, for whom the colony was named. The charter was finalized by the King's privy council on June 9, 1732.

Oglethorpe envisioned a colony which would serve as a haven for English subjects who had been imprisoned for debt and "the worthy poor". General Oglethorpe imposed very strict laws that many colonists disagreed with, such as the banning of alcoholic beverages. He disagreed with slavery and thought a system of smallholdings more appropriate than the large plantations common in the colonies just to the north. However, land grants were not as large as most colonists would have preferred.

Another reason for the founding of the colony was as a buffer state and a " garrison province" which would defend the southern British colonies from Spanish Florida. Oglethorpe imagined a province populated by "sturdy farmers" who could guard the border; because of this, the colony's charter prohibited slavery. The ban on slavery was lifted by 1751 and the colony became a royal colony by 1752.

Foundation

Oglethorpe's original plan had called for Georgia to be established as a safe home for those who had been imprisoned as debtors. The following is an historical accounting of these first English settlers sent to Georgia:

"A committee was appointed to visit the jails and obtain the discharge of such poor prisoners as were worthy, carefully investigating character, circumstances and antecedents."

"Thirty-five families, numbering one hundred and twenty persons, were selected."

"On the 16th of November, 1732, the emigrants embarked at Gravesend on the ship Anne ... arriving January 13th [1733] in the harbor of Charleston, S. C. ..."

"They set sail the day following ... into Port Royal, some eighty miles southward, to be conveyed in small vessels to the river Savannah."

Oglethorpe continued up the river to scout a location suitable for settlement. On February 12, 1733, Oglethorpe led the settlers to their arrival at Yamacraw Bluff, in what is now the city of Savannah, and established a camp with the help of a local elderly Creek chief, Tomochichi. A Yamacraw Indian village had occupied the site, but Oglethorpe arranged for the Indians to move. The day is still celebrated as Georgia Day.

The original charter specified the colony as being between the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers, up to their headwaters (the headwaters of the Altamaha are on the Ocmulgee River), and then extending westward "to the south seas." The area within the charter had previously been part of the original grant of the Province of Carolina, which was closely linked to Georgia.

Development

The Privy Council approved the establishment charter on June 9, 1732, and for the next two decades the council of trustees governed the province, with the aid of annual subsidies from Parliament. However, after many difficulties and the departure of Oglethorpe, the trustees proved unable to manage the proprietary colony, and on June 23, 1752, they submitted a deed of reconveyance to the crown, one year before the expiration of the charter. On January 7, 1755, Georgia officially ceased to be a proprietary colony and became a crown colony.

From 1732 until 1758, the minor civil divisions were districts and towns. In 1758, without Indian permission, the Province of Georgia was divided into eight parishes by the Act of the Assembly of Georgia on March 15. The Town and District of Savannah was named Christ Church Parish. The District of Abercorn and Goshen, and the District of Ebenezer, was named the Parish of St. Matthew. The District of Halifax was named the Parish of St. George. The District of Augusta was named the Parish of St. Paul. The Town of Hardwick and the District of Ogeechee, including the islands of Ossabaw, was named the Parish of St. Philip. From Sunbury in the District of Midway and Newport to the south branch of Newport, including the islands of St. Catherine and Bermuda, was named the Parish of St. John. The Town and District of Darien, to the Altamaha River; including the islands of Sapelo and Eastwood, and including the sea islands north of Egg Island, was named the Parish of St. Andrew. The Town and District of Frederica; including the islands of Great and Little St. Simons, and the adjacent islands, was named the Parish of St. James.

Following Britain's victory in the French and Indian War, King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763. One of its provisions was to extend Georgia's southern boundary from the Altamaha River to the St. Marys River. Two years later, on March 25, 1765, Gov. James Wright approved an act of the General Assembly creating four new parishes St. David, St. Patrick, St. Thomas, and St. Mary-in the newly acquired land, and further assigning Jekyll Island to St. James Parish. In 1777, the original eight counties of the State of Georgia were created.

In practice, settlement in the colony was limited to the near vicinity of the Savannah River. The western area of the colony remained under the control of the Creek Indian Confederation until after the American Revolutionary War.

In the beginning, the colony had a sluggish start. James Oglethorpe did not allow liquor, and colonists who came at the trustees' expense were not allowed to own more than 50 acres (0.20 km ²) of land for their farm in addition to a 60 foot by 90 foot plot in town. Those who paid their own way could bring ten indentured servants and would receive 500 acres of land. Additional land could neither be acquired nor sold.

Discontent grew in the colony because of these restrictions, and so Oglethorpe lifted them. With slavery, liquor, and land acquisition the colony improved much faster. Slavery had been permitted from 1749. There was some internal opposition, particularly from Scottish settlers, but by the time of the War of Independence, Georgia was much like the rest of the South.

On April 24, 1802, Georgia ceded to Congress parts of its western territories. These became the Mississippi Territory and later (with other adjoining lands) the states of Alabama and Mississippi.

In Spanish: Provincia de Georgia para niños

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Learn Province of Georgia facts for kids

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The Province of North Carolina was originally part of the Province of Carolina, which was chartered by eight Lords Proprietor. The province later became the U.S. states of North Carolina and Tennessee, and parts of the province combined with other territory to form the states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.
For history prior to 1729, see Province of Carolina.
King Charles II of England granted the Carolina charter in 1663 for land south of Virginia Colony and north of Spanish Florida. Charles II granted the land to eight Lords Proprietors in return for their financial and political assistance in restoring him to the throne in 1660. Because the northern half of the colony differed significantly from the southern half, and because transportation and communication between the two settled regions was difficult, a separate deputy governor was named to administer the northern half of the colony starting in 1691.

The division of the colony into North and South was completed at a meeting of the Lords Proprietors held at Craven House in London on December 7, 1710, although the same proprietors continued to control both colonies. The first Governor of the separate North Carolina Province was Edward Hyde.

Unrest against the proprietors in South Carolina in 1719 led to the appointment of a royal governor in that colony by King George I, whereas the Lords Proprietor continued to appoint the governor of North Carolina.

In 1729, after nearly a decade-long attempt by the British government to locate and buy out seven of the eight Lords Proprietors, both Carolinas became royal colonies. The remaining one-eighth share of the Province (part of North Carolina known as the Granville District) was retained by members of the Carteret family until 1776.

Expansion westward from the province's seats of power on the coast began early in the 18th Century, particularly after the conclusion of the Tuscarora and Yamasee wars, in which the largest barrier to colonial settlement further inland was removed. The French and Indian War, and the accompanying Anglo-Cherokee War in which the two remaining major tribes in the province-the Cherokee and Catawba-were effectively neutralized made settlement in large numbers over the Appalachian Mountains more feasible. In order to stifle potential conflict with natives in that region, including the Cherokee, King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763, barring settlers in any of the provinces of North America from settling near the headwaters of any rivers or streams that flowed westward towards the Mississippi River. This included several North Carolina rivers, including the French Broad and Watauga. While this proclamation was not strictly obeyed, and was widely detested in North Carolina, the edict likely served to delay immigration into what is now Tennessee by large masses of people until after the American Revolutionary War.

Settlers continued to flow westwards in smaller numbers, despite the prohibition against doing so, and as a result several trans-Appalachian settlements were formed. Most prominently, the Watauga Association formed in 1772 as an ostensibly-independent territory within the bounds of North Carolina (now modern-day Tennessee), which adopted its own written constitution. Prominent frontiersmen like Daniel Boone traveled back and forth across the invisible proclamation line as market hunters, seeking valuable pelts to sell in eastern settlements, but eventually served as leaders and guides for small groups of immigrants who settled in the areas that are now Tennessee and Kentucky.

Two important maps of the province were reproduced: one by Edward Moseley in 1733, and another by John Collet in 1770. Other maps exist dating to the early period of the Age of Discovery that depict portions of the province, or, more specifically, the coastline of the province along with that of South Carolina.

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Province of North Carolina Facts for Kids

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The Province of North Carolina was originally part of the Province of Carolina, which was chartered by eight Lords Proprietor. The province later became the U.S. states of North Carolina and Tennessee, and parts of the province combined with other territory to form the states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

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The history of the colonial period of South Carolina focuses on the English colonization that created one of the original Thirteen Colonies. Major settlement began after 1651 as the northern half of the British colony of Carolina attracted frontiersmen from Pennsylvania and Virginia, while the southern parts were populated by wealthy English planters who set up large plantations dependent on slave labor, for the cultivation of cotton, rice, and indigo.

The colony was separated into the Province of South Carolina and the Province of North Carolina in 1712. South Carolina's capital city of Charleston became a major port for traffic on the Atlantic Ocean, and South Carolina developed indigo, rice and Sea Island cotton as commodity crop exports, making it one of the most prosperous of the colonies. A strong colonial government fought wars with the local Indians, and with Spanish imperial outposts in Florida, while fending off the threat of pirates. Birth rates were high, food was abundant, and these offset the disease environment of malaria to produce rapid population growth among whites. With the expansion of plantation agriculture, the colony imported numerous African slaves, who comprised a majority of the population by 1708. They were integral to its development.

The colony developed a system of laws and self-government and a growing commitment to Republicanism, which patriots feared was threatened by the British Empire after 1765. At the same time, men with close commercial and political ties to Great Britain tended to be Loyalists when the revolution broke out. South Carolina joined the American Revolution in 1775, but was bitterly divided between Patriots and Loyalists. The British invaded in 1780 and captured most of the state, but were finally driven out.

After several expeditions and settlement attempts in the 16th century, France and Spain had abandoned the area of present-day Southern Carolina In 1629 Charles I granted his attorney general a charter to everything between latitudes 36 and 31. Later, in 1663, Charles II granted the land to eight Lords Proprietors in return for their financial and political assistance in restoring him to the throne in 1660. Anthony Ashley Cooper, later the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury emerged as the leader of the Lords Proprietors, and John Locke became his assistant and chief planner. The two men were chiefly responsible for developing the Grand Model for the Province of Carolina, which included the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina.

The newly created province was intended in part to serve as an English bulwark to contest lands claimed by Spanish Florida. There was a single government of the Carolinas based in Charleston until 1712, when a separate government (under the Lords Proprietors) was set up for North Carolina. In 1719, the Crown purchased the South Carolina colony from the absentee Lords Proprietors and appointed Royal Governors. By 1729, seven of the eight Lords Proprietors had sold their interests back to the Crown; the separate royal colonies of North Carolina and South Carolina were established.

Throughout the Colonial Period, the Carolinas participated in numerous wars with the Spanish and the Native Americans, particularly the Yamasee, Apalachee, and Cherokee. During the Yamasee War of 1715-1717, South Carolina faced near annihilation due to Native American attacks. An indigenous alliance had formed to try to push the colonists out, in part as a reaction to their trade in Native American slaves for the nearly 50 years since 1670. The effects of the slave trade affected tribes throughout the Southeast. Estimates are that Carolinians exported 24,000-51,000 Native American slaves to markets from Boston to Barbados.

The emerging planter class used the revenues to finance the purchase of enslaved Africans and financing of indentured servants. So many Africans were imported that they comprised a majority of the population in the colony from 1708 through the American Revolution. Living and working together on large plantations, they developed what is known as the Gullah culture and creole language, maintaining many west African traditions of various cultures, while adapting to the new environment.

The white population of the Lowcountry was dominated by wealthy planters of English descent and indentured servants from southern and western England. The interior Carolina upcountry was settled later, largely in the 18th century by Ulster Scots immigrants arriving via Pennsylvania and Virginia, German Calvinists, French Huguenot refugees in the Piedmont and foothills as well as by working class English indentured servants who moved inland after completing their terms of service working on coastal plantations. Toward the end of the Colonial Period, the upcountry people were underrepresented politically and felt they were mistreated by the planter elite. In reaction, many took a Loyalist position when the Lowcountry planters complained of the new taxes, an issue that later contributed to the colony's support of the American Revolution.

In North Carolina a short-lived colony was established near the mouth of the Cape Fear River. A ship was sent southward to explore the Port Royal, South Carolina area, where the French had established the short-lived Charlesfort post and the Spanish had built Santa Elena, the capital of Spanish Florida from 1566 to 1587, until it was abandoned. Captain Robert Sanford made a visit with the friendly Edisto Indians. When the ship departed to return to Cape Fear, Dr. Henry Woodward stayed behind to study the interior and native Indians.

In Bermuda, an 80-year-old Puritan Bermudian colonist, Colonel William Sayle, was named governor of Carolina. On March 15, 1670, under Sayle (who sailed on a Bermuda sloop with a number of Bermudian families), they finally reached Port Royal. According to the account of one passenger, the Indians were friendly, made signs toward where they should land, and spoke broken Spanish. Spain still considered Carolina to be its land; the main Spanish base, St. Augustine, was not far away. The Spanish missionary provinces of Guale and Mocama occupied the coast south of the Savannah River and Port Royal.

Though the Edisto Indians were not happy to have the English settle permanently, the chief of the Kiawah Indians, who lived farther north along the coast, arrived to invite the English to settle among his people and protect them from the Westo tribe, slave-raiding allies of Virginia. The sailors agreed and sailed for the region now called West Ashley. When they landed in early April at Albemarle Point on the shores of the Ashley River, they founded Charles Town, named in honor of their king. On May 23, Three Brothers arrived in Charles Town Bay without 11 or 12 passengers who had gone for water and supplies at St. Catherines Island, and had run into Indians allied with the Spanish. Of the hundreds of people who had sailed from England or Barbados, only 148 people, including three African slaves, lived to arrive at Charles Town Landing.

The end of proprietary rule

Proprietary rule was unpopular in South Carolina almost from the start, mainly because propertied immigrants to the colony hoped to monopolize fundamental constitutions of Carolina as a basis for government. Moreover, many Anglicans resented the Proprietors' guarantee of freedom of religion to Dissenters. In November 1719, Carolina elected James Moore as governor and sent a representative to ask the King to make Carolina a royal province with a royal governor. They wanted the Crown to grant the colony aid and security directly from the English government. Because the Crown was interested in Carolina's exports and did not think the Lords Proprietor were adequately protecting the colony, it agreed. Robert Johnson, the last proprietary governor, became the first royal governor.

Meanwhile, the colony of Carolina was slowly splitting in two. In the first fifty years of the colony's existence, most settlement was focused on the region around Charleston, as the northern part of the colony had no deep water port. North Carolina's earliest settlement region, the Albemarle Settlements, was colonized by Virginians and closely tied to Virginia. In 1712, the northern half of Carolina was granted its own governor and named "North Carolina". North Carolina remained under proprietary rule until 1729.

Because South Carolina was more populous and more commercially important, most Europeans thought primarily of it, and not of North Carolina, when they referred to "Carolina". By the time of the American Revolution, this colony was known as "South Carolina."

Frontier settlement

Governor Robert Johnson encouraged settlement in the western frontier to make Charles Town's shipping more profitable, and to create a buffer zone against attacks. The Carolinians arranged a fund to lure European Protestants. Each family would receive free land based on the number of people that it brought over, including indentured servants and slaves. Every 100 families settling together would be declared a parish and given two representatives in the state assembly. Within ten years, eight townships formed, all along navigable streams. Charlestonians considered the towns created by the Huguenots, German Calvinists, Scots, Ulster-Scots Presbyterians, working class English laborers who were former indentured servants and Welsh farmers, such as Orangeburg and Saxe-Gotha (later called Cayce), to be their first line of defense in case of an Indian attack, and military reserves against the threat of a slave uprising. Between 1729 and 1775, twenty-nine new towns were founded in South Carolina.

By the 1750s the Piedmont region attracted numerous frontier families from the north, using the Great Wagon Road. Differences in religion, philosophy and background between the mostly subsistence farmers in the Upcountry and the slaveholding planters of the Low Country bred distrust and hostility between the two regions. The Low Country planters traditionally had wealth, education and political power. By the time of the Revolution, however, the Upcountry contained nearly half the white population of South Carolina, about 30,000 settlers. Nearly all of them were Dissenting Protestants. After the Revolution, the state legislature disestablished the Anglican Church.

The main source of wealth during the late-colonial period was the export of rice, deerskins and, by the 1760s, indigo. Sea Island cotton, produced on large plantations off the coast, was also highly profitable.

Cherokee Wars

Though Governor Francis Nicholson attempted to pacify the Cherokee with gifts, they had grown discontented with the arrangements. Sir Alexander Cuming negotiated with them to open some land for settlement in 1730. Because Governor James Glen stepped in to bring peace between the Creek people and Cherokee, who were traditional enemies, the Cherokee rewarded him by granting South Carolina a few thousand acres of land near their major Lower Town of Keowee. In 1753, the Carolinians built Fort Prince George as a British outpost and trading center near the Keowee River. Two years later Old Hop, an important Cherokee chief, made a treaty with Glen at Saluda Old Town, midway between Charles Town and Keowee. Old Hop gave the Carolinians the 96th District, a region that included parts of ten currently separate counties.

From 1755 to 1758, Cherokee warriors served as British allies in campaigns along the Virginia and Pennsylvania frontier. Returning homeward, they were killed by Virginia frontiersmen. In 1759, the Cherokee avenged these killings and began attacking white settlers in the southern colonial Upcountry. South Carolina's Governor William Henry Lyttelton raised an army of 1,100 men and marched on the Lower Towns, which quickly agreed to peace. As part of the peace terms, two dozen Cherokee chiefs were imprisoned as hostages in Fort Prince George. Lyttelton returned to Charles Town, but the Cherokee continued raiding the frontier. In February 1760, the Cherokee attacked Fort Prince George trying to rescue the hostages. In the battle, the fort's commander was killed. His replacement quickly ordered the execution of the hostages, then fought off the Cherokee assault.

Unable to put down the rebellion, Governor Lyttelton appealed to Jeffrey Amherst, who sent Archibald Montgomery with an army of 1,200 British regulars and Scots Highlanders. Montgomery's army burned a few of the Cherokees' abandoned Lower Towns. When he tried to cross into the region of the Cherokee Middle Towns, he was ambushed and defeated at "Etchoe Pass" and forced to return to Charles Town. In 1761 the British made a third attempt to defeat the Cherokee. General Grant led an army of 2,600 men, including Catawba scouts. The Cherokee fought at Etchoe Pass but failed to stop Grant's army. The British burned the Cherokee Middle Towns and fields of crops.

In September 1761, a number of Cherokee chiefs led by Attakullakulla petitioned for peace. The terms of the peace treaty, concluded in Charleston that December, included the cession of lands along the South Carolina frontier.

Settlement of Upcountry

After the Cherokee defeat and cession of land, new settlers from Ulster flooded into the Upcountry through the Waxhaws in what is now called Lancaster County. Lawlessness ensued and robbery, arson, and looting became common. Upcountry residents formed a group of "Regulators," vigilantes who took the law into their own hands to control the criminals. Having acquired 50% of the state's white population, but just three elected assemblymen in the Commons House of Assembly, the Upcountry sent representative Patrick Calhoun and other representatives before the Charles Town state legislature to appeal for representation, courts, roads, and supplies for churches and schools. Before long, Calhoun and Moses Kirkland were in the legislature as Upcountry representatives.

By 1775, the colony contained 60,000 European Americans and 80,000 mostly enslaved African Americans.

Lord William Campbell was the last English Governor of the Province of South Carolina.

Numerous churches built bases in Charleston, and expanded into the rural areas. From the founding of Charleston onwards, the colony welcomed many different religious groups, including Jews and Quakers, but Catholics were prohibited from practicing until after the American Revolution. Baptists and Methodists increased in number rapidly in the late 18th century as a result of the Great Awakening and its revivals, and their missionaries attracted many slaves with their inclusive congregations and recognition of blacks as preachers. The Scots-Irish in the Backcountry were Presbyterians, and the wealthy planters in the Low Country tended to be English Anglicans. The different churches recognized and supported each other, building the colony into a pluralist and tolerant society.

The highly successful preaching tour of evangelist George Whitefield in 1740 ignited a religious revival-called the First Great Awakening-which energized evangelical Protestants. They expanded their membership among the white farmers, and women were especially active in the small Methodist and Baptist churches that were springing up everywhere. The evangelicals worked hard to convert the slaves to Christianity and were especially successful among black women, who had played the role of religious specialists in Africa and again in America. Slave women exercised wide-ranging spiritual leadership among Africans in America in healing and medicine, church discipline, and revival enthusiasm.

African slaves

Many of the rich planters came from Barbados and other islands in the Caribbean, and brought seasoned African slaves from there. The planters duplicated elements of the Caribbean economies, developing plantations for the cultivation of export crops, such as Sea Island cotton, indigo, and particularly rice. The slaves came from many diverse cultures in West Africa, where they had developed an immunity to endemic malaria, which helped them survive in the Low Country of South Carolina, where it frequently occurred. Peter Wood documents that "Negro slaves played a significant and often determinative part in the evolution of the colony." They were integral to the expansion of the rice culture, and were also important in timber harvesting, as coopers, and in the production of naval stores. They were also active in the fur trade, and as boatmen, fishermen and cattle herders.

By 1708, expansion of plantation agriculture had required continuing importation of slaves from Africa and they comprised a majority of the population in the colony, a status maintained after the colonial era. On the large rice and cotton plantations, where slaves were held in large numbers with few white overseers, they gradually developed what has become known as the Gullah culture, which preserved numerous African customs and practices within adaptations to the local environment, and they developed a creole language based on West African languages and English.

Colonists tried to regulate the numerous slaves, including establishing dress rules to maintain differences between the classes. Relations between colonists and slaves were a result of continuing negotiation, with increasing tensions as slaves sought freedoms. In 1739 a group of slaves rose up in the Stono rebellion. Some of the leaders were from the Catholic kingdom of Kongo and appeared to be seasoned warriors; they introduced ritual practices from there and appeared to use military tactics they had learned in the Kongo. The site of the Stono Rebellion was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1974, in recognition of the slaves' bid for freedom.

Hurricanes

South Carolina was struck by four major hurricanes during the colonial period. Colonists became constantly aware of the threat these storms posed and their effects even on warfare.

The 1752 hurricane caused massive damage to homes, businesses, shipping, outlying plantation buildings and the rice crop; about 95 people died. Charles Town, the capital, was the fifth-largest city in British North America at the time. The storm was compact and powerful; the city and surrounding areas were saved from even greater destruction only because the wind shifted some three hours before high tide. The destruction resulted in a series of political effects that together substantially weakened the relationship between the royal governor and the local political elites in the Commons House Assembly: there was bickering between the various political authorities over money for rebuilding following the destruction of the colony's defenses, and the disruption caused a devastating financial crisis. The Commons threatened to report Governor Glen's conduct to the king.

Edgar, Walter. South Carolina: A History, (1998) the standard scholarly history

Rogers Jr., George C. and C. James Taylor. A South Carolina Chronology, 1497-1992 2nd Ed. (1994)

Coclanis, Peter A., "Global Perspectives on the Early Economic History of South Carolina," South Carolina Historical Magazine, 106 (April-July 2005), 130-46.

Edelson, S. Max. Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina (2007)

Hewat, Alexander. An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia Vol.1 and Vol.2 (London 1779)

LeMaster, Michelle, ed. Creating and Contesting Carolina. Proprietary Era Histories, (2013)

Wilson, Thomas D. The Ashley Cooper Plan: The Founding of Carolina and the Origins of Southern Political Culture. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

Wood, Peter H. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (1996)

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Colonial period of South Carolina Facts for Kids

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The history of the colonial period of South Carolina focuses on the English colonization that created one of the original Thirteen Colonies. Major settlement began after 1651 as the northern half of the British colony of Carolina attracted frontiersmen from Pennsylvania and Virginia, while the southern parts were populated by wealthy English planters who set up large plantations dependent on slave labor, for the cultivation of cotton, rice, and indigo.

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The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S. state of Maryland. Its first settlement and capital was St. Mary's City, in the southern end of St. Mary's County, which is a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay and is also bordered by four tidal rivers.

The province began as a proprietary colony of the English Lord Baltimore, who wished to create a haven for English Catholics in the new world at the time of the European wars of religion. Although Maryland was an early pioneer of religious toleration in the English colonies, religious strife among Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics, and Quakers was common in the early years, and Puritan rebels briefly seized control of the province. In 1689, the year following the Glorious Revolution, John Coode led a rebellion that removed Lord Baltimore from power in Maryland. Power in the colony was restored to the Baltimore family in 1715 when Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, insisted in public that he was a Protestant.

Origins in the 17th Century

Founding charter

The Catholic George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, (1579-1632), former Secretary of State to His Majesty, King Charles I, wished to create a haven for English Catholics in the New World. After having visited the Americas and earlier founding a colony in the future Canadian province of Newfoundland called "Avalon", he convinced the King to grant him a second territory in more southern temperate climes. Upon Baltimore's death in 1632 the grant was transferred to his eldest son Cecil.

On June 20, 1632 Charles I of England granted the original charter for Maryland, a proprietary colony of about twelve million acres (49,000 km²), to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore. Some historians view this grant as a form of compensation for Calvert's father's having been stripped of his title of Secretary of State upon announcing his Roman Catholicism in 1625. The charter offered no guidelines on religion, although it was assumed that Catholics would not be molested in the new colony. The charter had originally been granted to Calvert's father, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, but the 1st Baron Baltimore died before it could be executed, so it was granted to his son instead.

Whatever the reason for granting the colony specifically to Baltimore, however, the King had practical reasons to create a colony north of the Potomac in 1632. The colony of New Netherland begun by England's great imperial rival in this era, the United Provinces specifically claimed the Delaware River valley and was vague about its border with Virginia. Charles rejected all the Dutch claims on the Atlantic seaboard, but was anxious to bolster English claims by formally occupying the territory. The new colony was named after the devoutly Catholic Henrietta Maria of France, the Queen Consort.

Colonial Maryland was considerably larger than the present-day state of Maryland. The original charter granted the Calverts an imprecisely defined territory north of Virginia and south of the 40th parallel, comprising perhaps as much as 12 million acres (49,000 km²).

Early settlement

In Maryland, Baltimore sought to create a haven for English Catholics and to demonstrate that Catholics and Protestants could live together peacefully, even issuing the Act Concerning Religion in matters of religion. Cecil Calvert was himself a convert to Catholicism, a considerable political setback for a nobleman in 17th century England, where Roman Catholics could easily be considered enemies of the crown and potential traitors to their country. Like other aristocratic proprietors, he also hoped to turn a profit on the new colony.

Of the 200 or so initial settlers who traveled to Maryland on the ships Ark and Dove, the majority were Protestant. On November 22, 1633, Lord Baltimore sent the first settlers to the new colony, and after a long voyage with a stopover to resupply in Barbados, the Ark and the Dove landed on March 25, 1634 (thereafter celebrated as "Maryland Day"), at Blackistone Island, thereafter known as St. Clement's Island, off the northern shore of the Potomac River, upstream from its confluence with the Chesapeake Bay and Point Lookout. The new settlers were led by Lord Baltimore's younger brother Leonard Calvert, whom Baltimore had delegated to serve as governor of the new colony.

They made their first permanent settlement,

Here at St. Clement's Island, they raised a large cross, and led by Father Andrew White, celebrated Mass. The new settlement was called "St. Mary's City" and it became the first capitol of Maryland, and remained so for sixty years until 1695 when the colony's capital was moved north to the more central, newly established "Anne Arundel's Town (also briefly known as "Providence") and later renamed as " Annapolis".

More settlers soon followed and St. Mary's City. The tobacco crops that they had planned from the outset were very successful and made the new colony profitable very quickly. However, given the incidence of malaria and typhoid, life expectancy in Maryland was about 10 years less than in New England.

Relations with the Susquehannock

In 1642, the Province of Maryland declared war on the Susquehannock Indian nation (Conestoga peoples). The Susquehannock (with the help of the colony of New Sweden) defeated Maryland in 1644. As a result, the Conestoga traded almost exclusively with New Sweden to the north while the colony was young. The Susquehannocks remained in an intermittent state of war with Maryland until a peace treaty was concluded in 1652, but would become allies in the following decades. Records from this era are poor and accounts of these early conflicts are incomplete.

Border disputes

With Virginia

In 1629, George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore "driven by 'the sacred duty of finding a refuge for his Roman Catholic brethren", applied to Charles I for a royal charter to establish a colony south of Virginia. He also wanted a share of the fortunes being made in tobacco in Virginia, and hoped to recoup some of the financial losses he had sustained in his earlier colonial venture in Newfoundland.

In 1631, William Claiborne a Puritan from Virginia received a royal trading commission granting him the right to trade with the natives on all lands in the mid-Atlantic where there was not already a patent in effect. Claiborne established a trading post on sailed Kent Island on 28 May 1631.

Meanwhile, back in London, the Privy Council persuaded Sir George Calvert that he be granted a charter for lands north of the Virginia colony, in order to put pressure on the Dutch settlements further north along the Delaware and Hudson Rivers. Calvert agreed, but died in 1632 before the charter was formally signed by King Charles I. The Royal Grant and Charter for the new colony of Maryland was then granted to his son, Cecilius Calvert, on 20 June 1632. This place Claiborne on Calvert land. Claiborne refused to recognize acknowledge Lord Baltimore's charter and rights.

With Pennsylvania

Main page: Penn-Calvert boundary dispute

The border dispute with Pennsylvania continued and led to Cresap's War, a conflict between settlers from Pennsylvania and Maryland fought in the 1730s. Hostilities erupted in 1730 with a series of violent incidents prompted by disputes over property rights and law enforcement, and escalated through the first half of the decade, culminating in the deployment of military forces by Maryland in 1736 and by Pennsylvania in 1737. The armed phase of the conflict ended in May 1738 with the intervention of King George II, who compelled the negotiation of a cease-fire. A provisional agreement had been established in 1732.

With New York

In 1672, Lord Baltimore declared Maryland included the settlement of Whorekills on the west shore of the Delaware Bay, an area under the jurisdiction of the Province of New York (as the British had renamed New Netherland after taking possession in 1664). A force was dispatched which attacked and captured this settlement. New York could not immediately respond because New York was soon recaptured by the Dutch. This settlement was restored to the Province of New York when New York was recaptured from the Dutch in November, 1674.

Religious conflict

Although Maryland was an early pioneer of religious toleration in the British colonies, religious strife among Anglicans, Puritans, Roman Catholics, and Quakers was common in the early years, and Puritan rebels briefly seized control of the province. In 1644 the dispute with William Claiborne led to armed conflict. Claiborne seized Kent Island while his associate, the pro-Parliament Puritan Richard Ingle took over St. Mary's. Both used religion as a tool to gain popular support. From 1644 to 1646, the so-called "Plundering Time" was a period of civil unrest aggravated by the tensions of the English Civil War (1641-1651). Leonard Calvert returned from exile with troops, recaptured St. Mary's City, and eventually restored order.

In 1649 Maryland passed the Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, a law mandating religious tolerance for trinitarian Christians. Passed on September 21, 1649 by the assembly of the Maryland Colony, it was the first law requiring religious tolerance in the English North American colonies. In 1654, after the Third English Civil War (1649-1651), Parliamentary ( Puritan) forces assumed control of Maryland for a time.

The Protestant Revolution of 1689

Main page: Protestant Revolution (Maryland)

After this "Protestant Revolution" in Maryland, Darnall was forced, like many other Catholics, to maintain a secret chapel in his home in order to celebrate the Roman Catholic Mass. In 1704, an Act was passed "to prevent the growth of Popery in this Province", preventing Catholics from holding political office.

Full religious toleration would not be restored in Maryland until the American Revolution, when Darnall's great-grandson Charles Carroll of Carrollton, arguably the wealthiest Catholic in Maryland, signed the American Declaration of Independence.

Plantations and economy

Early settlements and populations centers tended to cluster around the rivers and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake Bay. In the 17th century, most Marylanders lived in rough conditions on small farms. While they raised a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, and livestock, the main cash crop was tobacco, which soon dominated the province's economy.

The Province of Maryland developed along lines very similar to those of Virginia. Tobacco was used as money, and the colonial legislature was obliged to pass a law requiring tobacco planters to raise a certain amount of corn as well, in order to ensure that the colonists would not go hungry. Like Virginia, Maryland's economy quickly became centered around the farming of tobacco for sale in Europe. The need for cheap labor to help with the growth of tobacco, and later with the mixed farming economy that developed when tobacco prices collapsed, led to a rapid expansion of indentured servitude and, later, forcible immigration and enslavement of Africans.

By 1730 there were public tobacco warehouses every fourteen miles. Bonded at £1,000 sterling, each inspector received from £25 to £60 as annual salary. Four hogsheads of 950 pounds were considered a ton for London shipment. Ships from English ports did not need port cities; they called at the wharves of warehouses or plantations along the rivers for tobacco and the next year returned with goods the planters had ordered from the shops of London.

Outside the plantations, much land was operated by independent farmers who rented from the proprietors, or owned it outright. They emphasized subsistence farming to grow food for their large families. Many of the Irish and Scottish immigrants specialized in rye-whiskey making, which they sold to obtain cash.

The 18th Century

Maryland developed into a plantation colony by the 18th century. In 1700 there were about 25,000 people and by 1750 that had grown more than 5 times to 130,000. By 1755, about 40% of Maryland's population was black. Maryland planters also made extensive use of indentured servants and penal labor. An extensive system of rivers facilitated the movement of produce from inland plantations and farms to the Atlantic coast for export. Baltimore, on Chesapeake Bay, was the second-most important port in the 18th-century South, after Charleston, South Carolina.

Dr. Alexander Hamilton (1712 - 1756) was a Scottish-born doctor and writer who lived and worked in Annapolis. Leo Lemay says his 1744 travel diary Gentleman's Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton is "the best single portrait of men and manners, of rural and urban life, of the wide range of society and scenery in colonial America."

In the late colonial period, the southern and eastern portions of the Province continued in their tobacco economy, but as the American Revolution approached, northern and central Maryland increasingly became centers of wheat production. This helped drive the expansion of interior farming towns like Frederick and Maryland's major port city of Baltimore.

The Abbé Claude C. Robin, a chaplain in the army of General Rochambeau, who travelled through Maryland during the Revolutionary War, described the lifestyle enjoyed by families of wealth and status in the colony:

"[Maryland houses] are large and spacious habitations, widely separated, composed of a number of buildings and surrounded by plantations extending farther than the eye can reach, cultivated...by unhappy black men whom European avarice brings hither...Their furniture is of the most costly wood, and rarest marbles, enriched by skilful and artistic work. Their elegant and light carriages are drawn by finely bred horses, and driven by richly apparelled slaves."

In the later colonial period, the southern and eastern portions of the Province continued in their tobacco economy, heavily dependent on slave labor, but as the revolution approached, northern and central Maryland increasingly became centers of wheat production. This helped drive the expansion of interior farming towns like Frederick and Maryland's major port city of Baltimore.

The American Revolution

Main page: Maryland in the American Revolution

Up to the time of the American Revolution, the Province of Maryland was one of two colonies that remained an English proprietary colony, Pennsylvania being the other. Maryland declared independence from Britain in 1776, with Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton signing the Declaration of Independence for the colony. In the 1776-77 debates over the Articles of Confederation, Maryland delegates led the party that insisted that states with western land claims cede them to the Confederation government, and in 1781, Maryland became the last state to ratify the Articles of Confederation. It accepted the United States Constitution more readily, ratifying it on April 28, 1788.

Maryland also gave up some territory to create the new District of Columbia after the American Revolution.

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The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S. state of Maryland. Its first settlement and capital was St.

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The Colony of Virginia (also known as Virginia Colony) was the first of thirteen colonies in North America. The colony was first attempted at Roanoke in 1584. But by 1590, when re supply ships reached the colony, the colonists were gone. The decision to settle Jamestown again came from a group called the Virginia Company of London. Virginia was settled again in 1607 at Jamestown, this time successfully. The Virginia Company had its charter revoked in 1624 for not showing a profit. At that time the colony of Virginia became a crown colony. It became a British colony after 1707.). It remained an English colony until the American Revolution.

The name Virginia was first applied by Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth I in 1584. After the English Civil War in the mid 17th century, the Virginia Colony was nicknamed "The Old Dominion" by King Charles II. He gave Virginia colony the name for its loyalty to the crown during the era of the Commonwealth of England. When Virginia colony was first settled it was a huge geographic area that was England's claim on all of North America. After the United States was formed, the entire states of West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, and portions of Ohio were all later created from the territory that was once known in the Colony of Virginia.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Colony of Virginia (also known as Virginia Colony) was the first of thirteen colonies in North America. The colony was first attempted at Roanoke in 1584. But by 1590, when re supply ships reached the colony, the colonists were gone. The decision to settle Jamestown again came from a group called the Virginia Company of London.

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This edition of Mr. Zoller's Social Studies Podcasts focuses on England's thirteen original colonies in the new world. Specifically, this podcast discusses the Southern Colonies: Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

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Thirteen Colonies: the Southern Colonies

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This edition of Mr. Zoller's Social Studies Podcasts focuses on England's thirteen original colonies in the new world. Specifically, this podcast discusses the Southern Colonies: Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

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Thirteen Colonies: the New England Colonies

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This edition of Mr. Zoller’s Social Studies Podcasts focuses on England’s thirteen original colonies in the new world. Specifically, this podcast discusses the New England Colonies: Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.

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This edition of Mr. Zoller’s Social Studies Podcasts focuses on England’s thirteen original colonies in the new world. Specifically, this podcast discusses the Middle Colonies: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware.

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The territory which would later become the state of New Jersey was settled by Dutch and Swedish colonists in the early seventeenth century. In 1664, at the onset of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, English forces under Richard Nicolls ousted the Dutch from control of New Netherland (present-day New York, New Jersey, and Delaware), and the territory was divided into several newly defined English colonies. Despite one brief year when the Dutch retook the colony (1673-74), New Jersey would remain an English possession until the American colonies declared independence in 1776.

In 1664, James, Duke of York (later King James II) divided New Jersey, granting a portion to two men, Sir George Carteret and John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton, who supported the monarchy's cause during the English Civil War (1642-49) and Interregnum (1649-60). Carteret and Berkeley subsequently sold their interests to two groups of proprietors, thus creating two provinces: East Jersey and the West Jersey. The exact location of the border between West Jersey and East Jersey was often a matter of dispute. The two provinces would be distinct political divisions from 1674 to 1702.

West Jersey was largely a Quaker colony due to the influence of Pennsylvania founder William Penn and its prominent Quaker investors. Many of its early settlers were Quakers who came directly from England, Scotland, and Ireland to escape religious persecution. Although a number of the East Jersey proprietors in England were Quakers and First Governor Robert Barclay of Aberdeenshire Scotland (Ury served by proxy) was a leading Quaker theologian, the Quaker influence on the East Jersey government was insignificant. Many of East Jersey's early settlers came from other colonies in the Western Hemisphere, especially New England, Long Island, and the West Indies. Elizabethtown and Newark in particular had a strong Puritan character. East Jersey's Monmouth Tract, south of the Raritan River, was developed primarily by Quakers from Long Island.

In 1702, both divisions of New Jersey were reunited as one royal colony by Queen Anne with a royal governor appointed by the Crown. Until 1738, this Province of New Jersey shared its royal governor with the neighboring Province of New York. The Province of New Jersey was governed by appointed governors until 1776. William Franklin, the province's last royal governor before the American Revolution (1775-83), was marginalized in the last year of his tenure, as the province was run by the Provincial Congress of New Jersey. In June 1776, the Provincial Congress formally deposed Franklin and had him arrested, adopted a state constitution, and reorganized the province into an independent state. The constitution granted the vote to all inhabitants who had a certain level of wealth, including single women and blacks (until 1807). The newly formed State of New Jersey elected William Livingston as its first governor on 31 August 1776-a position to which he would be reelected until his death in 1790. New Jersey was one of the original Thirteen Colonies, and was the third colony to ratify the constitution forming the United States of America. It thereby was admitted into the new federation as a state on 18 December 1787. On November 20, 1789 New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.

Before English control

Directors of New Netherland (1624-64)

New Netherland (Dutch: Nieuw-Nederland) was the seventeenth-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and the Dutch West India Company. It claimed territories along the eastern coast of North America from the Delmarva Peninsula to southwestern Cape Cod. Settled areas of New Netherland now constitute the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut as well as parts of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The provincial capital New Amsterdam was located at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan at Upper New York Bay.

New Netherland was conceived as a private business venture to exploit the North American fur trade. By the 1650s, the colony experienced dramatic growth and became a major port for trade in the North Atlantic. The leader of the Dutch colony was known by the title Director or Director-General. On 27 August 1664, four English frigates commanded by Richard Nicolls sailed into New Amsterdam's harbor and demanded the surrender of New Netherland. This event sparked the Second Anglo-Dutch War, which led to the transfer of the territory to England per the Treaty of Breda.

Portrait

Director or
Director-General

Took office

Left office

Notes

-

Cornelius Jacobsen May
(fl. 1600s)

1624

1625

Planted settlements at Nut Island (Noten Eylant)-now Governor's Island in New York Harbor-and High Island (Hooghe Eylant) on Delaware River

Cape May was named in his honour

-

Willem Verhulst
(or van der Hulst)
(fl. 1600s)

1625

1626

Unpopular with the colonists, he was quickly replaced

-

Sebastiaen Jansen Krol
(also known as Bastian Krol)
(1595-1674)

1632

1633

-

-

Willem Kieft
(1597-1647)

1638

1647

Attempted to drive out Lenape tribe

Attacks on Pavonia and Corlears Hook, led to Kieft's War

Fired by the Dutch West India Company in 1647

Died at sea near Swansea, Wales, on September 27, 1647 while returning to Amsterdam aboard the Princess Amelia

Peter Stuyvesant
(c.1612-72)

1647

1664

Pavonia, New Amsterdam and other settlements attacked by the Susquehannocks during the brief Peach Tree War (1655)

obtained victory in the Esopus Wars against the Lenape and Esopus tribes

Surrendered New Netherland to the British

Also the Director of Curaçao (1642-64)

Governors of New Sweden (1638-55)

New Sweden ( Swedish: Nya Sverige, Finnish: Uusi-Ruotsi) was a Swedish colony along the Delaware River from 1638 to 1655 that included territory in present-day Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. After being dismissed as director of New Netherland by the Dutch West India Company (WIC), Peter Minuit was recruited by Willem Usselincx, Samuel Blommaert and the Swedish government to create the first Swedish colony in the New World. The Swedes sought to expand their influence by creating an agricultural ( tobacco) and fur-trading colony, and thus bypassing French and English merchants.

The New Sweden Company was chartered and included Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, and German stockholders. Minuit and his company arrived on the Fogel Grip and Kalmar Nyckel at Swedes' Landing (now Wilmington, Delaware) in the spring of 1638. Willem Kieft, Director of New Netherland, objected to the Swedish presence, but Minuit ignored his protests knowing that the Dutch were militarily impotent. The colony would establish Fort Nya Elfsborg, near present-day Salem, New Jersey, in 1643.

In May 1654, Swedish militia captured the Fort Casimir, a Dutch defense located near present-day New Castle, Delaware. As a reprisal, the Dutch Director-General Peter Stuyvesant sent an army to the Delaware River, which compelled the surrender of the Swedish forts and settlements in 1655. The Swedish settlers continued to enjoy local autonomy, retaining their own militia, religion, court, and lands, however, until the English conquest of the New Netherland colony on 24 June 1664.

Peter Minuit
(1580-1638)

1638

1638

Arrived to settle the colony in March 1638 and embarked on return voyage to Sweden in June to organize a second group of settlers; Minuit died during a hurricane in the Caribbean in August 1638

Johan Björnsson Printz
(1592-1663)

1643

1653

Ordered construction of Fort Nya Elfsborg and Fort Nya Gothenborg on the Delaware River

The New Albion Colony (1634-49)

In 1634, Charles I of England granted a charter to Sir Edmund Plowden, to establish a colony in North America north of lands granted to Lord Baltimore for the Maryland colony in 1633. The charter empowered Plowden to assume the title Lord Earl Palatinate, Governor and Captain-General of the Province of New Albion in North America, and poorly defined the boundaries of the New Albion colony. It is believed that the colony would have covered territory within present-day New Jersey, New York, Delaware, and Maryland.

Captain Thomas Young and his nephew, Robert Evelyn, explored and charted the valley of the Delaware River (which they called the Charles River) in the 1630s. Plowden took several years to raise funds, and recruit settlers and "adventurers." In 1642, Plowden and several men sailed from England with aim to settle the colony. This attempt ended in an unsuccessful mutiny, and for the next seven years Plowden remained in Virginia managing the affairs of the intended colony, and selling land rights to adventurers and speculators.

Plowden returned to England in 1649 to raise funds, and promote the colony as a refuge for Roman Catholics exiled during the English Civil War. Despite further attempts to return to his colony, Plowden was confined in a debtors prison and died a pauper in 1659. A notation on John Farrar's 1651 map of Virginia references Plowden's patent for the colony, and labels the Delaware River as "this river the Lord Ployden hath a patten of and calls it New Albion but the Swedes are planted in it and have a great trade of Furrs."

As an English proprietary colony (1664-1702)

Governors under the Lords Proprietor (1664-73)

See also: Lords Proprietor, Proprietary colony, and Proprietary Governor

With the 1664 surrender of New Netherland by Peter Stuyvesant, and under the authority and instruction James, Duke of York, Richard Nicolls assumed the position as Deputy-Governor of New Netherland (including Dutch settlements in New Jersey). His first acts were to guarantee the Dutch colonists their property rights and religious freedom. Nicolls implemented the English common law and a legal code. Nicholls would remain governor until 1668, but the Duke of York granted part of the New Netherland territory (that between the Hudson and Delaware rivers, present day New Jersey), to Sir George Carteret and John Berkeley for their devoted service to the Duke of York and his brother Charles II during the English Civil War.

This territory would be called the Province of New Caesaria, or New Jersey after Jersey in the English Channel-one of the last strongholds of the Royalist forces in the English Civil War. (see Name of Jersey) As a result of this grant, Carteret and Berkeley became the two English Lords Proprietor of New Jersey. By the 1665 Concession and Agreement, the Lords Proprietor outlined the distribution of power in the province, offered religious freedom to all inhabitants, and established a system of quit-rents, annual fees paid by settlers in return for land. The two Lords Proprietor selected Carteret's brother Philip as the province's first governor.

Restoration of New Netherland (1673-74)

In 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch were able to recapture New Amsterdam (renamed "New York" by the British) under Admiral Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and Captain Anthony Colve. Evertsen had renamed the city " New Orange". Evertsen returned to the Netherlands in July 1674, and was accused of disobeying his orders. Evertsen had been instructed not to retake New Amsterdam, but instead, to conquer the British colonies of Saint Helena and Cayenne (now French Guiana). In 1674, the Dutch were compelled to relinquish New Amsterdam to the British under the terms of the Second Treaty of Westminster.

East and West Jerseys (1674-1702)

After the British regained New Jersey and New York, New Jersey was restored as a proprietary colony and was divided into two provinces-East Jersey and West Jersey. In 1674, Berkeley sold his interest in West Jersey to Edward Byllynge and John Fenwick (1618-83). Fenwick rushed to the colony to establish a settlement, Fenwick's Colony, that would become Salem. Due to Byllynge's financial difficulties encountered in his attempts to assert his title to the colony, he sought investment from William Penn, and others. Title issues were settled in 1676 with the negotiation of the Quintipartite Deed between Carteret, Penn, Byllynge, Nicholas Lucas, and Gawen Lawrie dividing the colony into East and West Jersey. West Jersey was largely a Quaker venture focused on the settlement of the lower Delaware River area, and was associated with William Penn and prominent figures in the colonization of the Pennsylvania. After Carteret's death, his heirs sold his interest in East Jersey to twelve investors, eleven of whom were members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), who asked the Quaker apologist Robert Barclay to serve as governor. The settlement of East Jersey, and its commercial and political development was chiefly connected to New England and New York.

This arrangement lasted for approximately thirty years, but because of issues of administration, the proprietors of both colonies surrendered their right to government to Queen Anne. On 17 April 1702, New Jersey was transformed into a crown colony. The proprietors would retain their land rights until the East Jersey proprietors dissolved their corporation (then New Jersey's oldest) in 1998. The West Jersey Proprietors, currently the second oldest corporation in North America, continues as an activity entity based in Burlington, New Jersey.

For a brief period beginning in 1688, New York, East Jersey and West Jersey came under the short-lived Dominion of New England. New York and New Jersey were largely overseen by a Lieutenant Governor and army captain, Francis Nicholson. The Proprietors of East Jersey were angered by the revocation of their charters, but retained their property and petitioned Andros, the governor of the dominion, for manorial rights. The colony proved too large for a single governor to administer, and Andros was highly unpopular.

After news of the Glorious Revolution in England reached Boston in 1689, the anti-Catholic Puritans in New England, and Dutch Calvinists in New York launched a revolt against Andros, arresting him and his officers out of fear that Andros sought to impose popery on the colony. Leisler's Rebellion in New York City deposed Nicholson in what amounted to an ethnic war between English newcomers and the Dutch who were old settlers. After these events, the colonies reverted to their previous forms of governance until 1702.

Governors of East Jersey (1674-1702)

Governors of West Jersey (1680-1702)

As a British Crown colony (1702-76)

Governors of New York and New Jersey (1702-38)

See also: Province of New York and List of colonial governors of New York

Shortly after ascending to the British throne, Queen Anne (1665-1714) reunited East Jersey and West Jersey as a royal colony and appointed her cousin Edward Hyde, Viscount Cornbury, as the province's first Royal Governor. In 1702, the governments of the two proprietary colonies had surrendered their authority to the Crown which reorganized New Jersey into a crown colony with a government that consisted of a governor and twelve-member council appointed by the British monarch, and a twenty-four-member assembly whose members were elected by colonists who were qualified to vote by owning at least 1,000 acres of land.

For the next four decades, New Jersey and New York shared one royal governor. Because the crown's representatives were generally incompetent or corrupt, and the royal governor often ignored New Jersey and its affairs, the colonists had substantial autonomy, and the proprietors continued to wield considerable power through the retained control of land titles and sales. The relationship between many of the Royal Governors and the provincial assembly was often hostile. The assembly would simply respond to disagreements over legislation by using its appropriation power to withhold the governor's salary. Several historians point towards a factionalism which defined the colonial government, but the factions have been described as inchoate and characterized by shifting alliances between the colony's various ethnic, religious, proprietary, and landowning groups.

During this period, the population of the colony began to expand, from 14,000 in 1700 to nearly 52,000 by 1740. It was a diverse colony, as Queen Anne and Royal Governor Hunter began to important Palatine Germans into New York's Hudson Valley in a plan to produce naval stores. Many of these German families eventually settled in New Jersey. West Jersey's colonists included Irish, English, Welsh and Scottish Quakers and the descendants of Swedish and Finnish colonists from the former New Sweden colony. Dutch and Huguenot families from New York settled in the valleys of the Raritan River and Hackensack River, and in the northwestern New Jersey's Minisink region. New Englanders from Connecticut and Long Island, and English planters from Barbados arrived with African slaves. Because of its liberal grant of religious freedom, the colony's diversity was also reflected in its religious plurality, with a strong presence of Dutch Reformed, Lutheran, Huguenot, Quaker, Puritan, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Anglican churches.

Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury
(1661-1723)

1701

1708

Lord Cornbury's tenure was marked with accusations of cross-dressing, corruption, arrogance, and decadence.

Historians claim that he illustrated the worst form of the English aristocracy's arrogance

He was recalled by Queen Anne who received several complaints from colonists of "numerous malpractices and misappropriations".

-

John Hamilton

1736

1738

Governors of New Jersey (1738-76)

After tensions were provoked with the Penn's Walking Purchase in 1737, relations between colonists and the region's Native American tribes became increasingly hostile. During these years, colonists left the seacoast cities and settled the colony's northwestern wilderness. Much of the provincial government's actions during this time was organizing the wilderness into townships often named after English and colonial political figures. By the 1750s, violent raids against these settlers, and fears that the French were supporting these hostilities led to the French and Indian War.

During this time, the colonial government provided generous monetary rewards to colonists who killed Indians, established a line of fortifications in the Minisink (i.e., the upper valley of the Delaware River), and mustered military units (the New Jersey Frontier Guard and 1st New Jersey Regiment) to defend this frontier and carry out punitive raids on Indian villages. Hostilities began to subside with the Treaty of Easton in October 1758, negotiated by New Jersey Royal Governor Francis Bernard, Pennsylvania Attorney-General Benjamin Chew, and chiefs of 13 Native American nations, led by Teedyuscung.

New Jersey was the only province to have two colleges established during the colonial period, and the colony's governors were influential in their establishment. Governors John Hamilton, John Reading, and Jonathan Belcher aided the establishment of The College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) which was founded in 1746 in Elizabethtown by a group of Great Awakening "New Lighters" that included Jonathan Dickinson, Aaron Burr, Sr. and Peter Van Brugh Livingston. In 1756, the school moved to Princeton. In 1766, Governor William Franklin issued the charters to establish Queens College (now Rutgers University) in New Brunswick to "educate the youth in language, liberal, the divinity, and useful arts and sciences" and for the training of future ministers for the Dutch Reformed Church. Franklin issued a second charter in 1770 after the college's trustees requested amendments.

In the last year of William Franklin's tenure, his power was diminished and he became marginalized by the rebellious sentiment rising in the colony's residents. The province was being run by the Provincial Congress of New Jersey (1775-76). While colonial militia had put Franklin under house arrest in January 1776, he would not be formally deposed until June 1776 when the colony's Provincial Congress had him imprisoned. Franklin considered the Provincial Congress to be an "illegal assembly." Under the direction of its president Samuel Tucker (1721-89), the Provincial Congress proceeded to adopt a state constitution and reorganize the province into an independent state. The newly formed State of New Jersey elected William Livingston as its first governor on 31 August 1776.

-

John Hamilton

1746

1747

Francis Bernard
(1712-79)

1758

1760

-

Thomas Boone
(c.1730-1812)

1760

1761

Appointed in 1759, but did not arrive in New Jersey until 10 May 1760, and did not meet with the colonial assembly until 30 October 1760.

In 1761, Boone was appointed Governor of South Carolina.

Boonton in Morris County was named in his honour.

-

Josiah Hardy
(1715-90)

1761

1763

Son of Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Hardy (1680-1744), Lord commissioner of the Admiralty, brother to Sir Charles Hardy (1716-80), Royal Governor of New York.

Hardy gained "a reputation for promptness, attentiveness and openness" as New Jersey's governor.

Replaced in 1763 in an effort to impose greater imperial authority over the colonies following the French and Indian War.

Hardyston Township in Sussex County was named in his honour.

William Franklin
(c.1730-1814)

1763

1776

Despite his reputation for arrogance, stubbornness and a fiery temper, Franklin is considered one of the more popular and successful chief executives in New Jersey history.

Issued charters to found Queen's College (now Rutgers University).

Franklin was placed under house arrest by colonial militia in 1776 by the order of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey, an entity he referred to as an "illegal assembly."

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List of colonial governors of New Jersey Facts for Kids

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The territory which would later become the state of New Jersey was settled by Dutch and Swedish colonists in the early seventeenth century. In 1664, at the onset of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, English forces under Richard Nicolls ousted the Dutch from control of New Netherland (present-day New York, New Jersey, and Delaware), and the territory was divided into several newly defined English colonies.

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Quick facts for kids

New Jersey

1664–1673
1702–1783

Flag

Status

Proprietary Colony of England (1664–1673)
Royal Colony of England (1702–1707)
Royal Colony of Great Britain (1707–1783)

Capital

Elizabethtown (1664–1673)
Perth Amboy and Burlington (1702–1783)

Common languages | English, Dutch
Government | Constitutional monarchy

Legislature

Council
General Assembly

History |

• Established

1664

• Disestablished

1783

Currency | New Jersey pound

Preceded by | Succeeded by

| New Netherland

East Jersey |
West Jersey |
New Jersey |

Today part of | United States

History of
New Jersey

Colonial period
American Revolution
Nineteenth century
Twentieth century
Twenty-first century
Timeline of New Jersey

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The Province of New Jersey was one of the Middle Colonies of Colonial America and became the U.S. state of New Jersey in 1783. The province had originally been settled by Europeans as part of New Netherland but came under English rule after the surrender of Fort Amsterdam in 1664, becoming a proprietary colony. The English renamed the province after the Bailiwick of Jersey in the English Channel. The Dutch Republic reasserted control for a brief period in 1673–1674. After that it consisted of two political divisions, East Jersey and West Jersey, until they were united as a royal colony in 1702. The original boundaries of the province were slightly larger than the current state, extending into a part of the present state of New York, until the border was finalized in 1773.

Contents

Background

Proprietary government

East Jersey and West Jersey

Dominion of New England

Royal colony

New York–New Jersey Line War

Provincial Congress

First state constitution

Images for kids

Background

The relative location of New Netherland and New Sweden in eastern North America.

See also: Colonial history of New Jersey, Bergen, New Netherland, and New Sweden

The Province of New Jersey was originally settled in the 1610s as part of the colony of New Netherland. The surrender of Fort Amsterdam in September 1664 gave control over the entire Mid-Atlantic region to the English as part the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The English justified the seizure by claiming that John Cabot (c. 1450 – c. 1508), an Italian under the sponsorship of the English King Henry VII, had been the first to discover the place, though it was probably to assert control over the profitable North Atlantic trade. Director-General of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant, (unable to rouse a military defense) relinquished control of the colony and was able in the articles of transfer to secure guarantees for property rights, laws of inheritance, and freedom of religion. After the surrender Richard Nicolls took the position as deputy-governor of New Amsterdam and the rest of New Netherland, including those settlements on the west side of the North River (Hudson River) known as Bergen, and those along the Delaware River that had been New Sweden.

Proprietary government

See also: Province of New York

See also: Lords Proprietor (1665–1703) and Governors under the Proprietors (1665–1674)

In March 1664, King Charles II granted his brother, James, the Duke of York, a Royal colony that covered New Netherland and present-day Maine. This charter also included parts of present-day Massachusetts, which conflicted with that colony's charter. The charter allowed James traditional propriety rights and imposed few restrictions upon his powers. In general terms, the charter was equivalent to a conveyance of land conferring on him the right of possession, control, and government, subject only to the limitation that the government must be consistent with the laws of England. The Duke of York never visited his colony and exercised little direct control of it. He elected to administer his government through governors, councils, and other officers appointed by himself. No provision was made for an elected assembly.

Later in 1664, the Duke of York gave the part of his new possessions between the Hudson River and the Delaware River to Sir George Carteret in exchange for settlement of a debt. The territory was named after the Island of Jersey, Carteret's ancestral home. The other section of New Jersey was sold to Lord Berkeley of Stratton, who was a close friend of the Duke. As a result, Carteret and Berkeley became the two English Lords Proprietors of New Jersey. The two proprietors of New Jersey attempted to attract more settlers to move to the province by granting sections of lands to settlers and by passing the Concession and Agreement, a 1665 document that granted religious freedom to all inhabitants of New Jersey; under the British government, there was no such religious freedom as the Church of England was the state church. In return for the land, the settlers were supposed to pay annual fees known as quit-rents.

In 1665, Philip Carteret became the first Governor of New Jersey, appointed by the two proprietors. He selected Elizabeth as the capital of New Jersey. Immediately, Carteret issued several additional grants of land to landowners. Towns were started and charters granted to Bergen (1668) Woodbridge (1669), Piscataway (1666), Shrewsbury, Middletown (1693) and Newark (1666).

The idea of quitrents became increasingly difficult because many of the settlers refused to pay them. Most of them claimed that they owed nothing to the proprietors because they received land from Richard Nicolls, Governor of New York. This forced Berkeley to sell West Jersey to John Fenwick and Edward Byllynge, two English Quakers. Many more Quakers made their homes in New Jersey, seeking religious freedom from English (Church of England) rule.

Meanwhile, conflicts began rising in New Jersey. Edmund Andros, governor of New York, attempted to gain authority over East Jersey after the death of Proprietor George Carteret in 1680. However, he was unable to remove the position of governorship from Governor Phillip Carteret and subsequently moved to attack him and brought him to trial in New York. Carteret was later acquitted. In addition, quarrels occurred in between Eastern and Western New Jerseyans, between Native Americans and New Jerseyans and between different religious groups. In the largest of these squabbles, the New York-New Jersey Line War some 210,000 acres (849.8 km²) of land were at stake between New York and New Jersey. The conflict was eventually settled by a royal commission in 1769.

East Jersey and West Jersey

1706 Map of East and West Jersey

See also: Governors of East Jersey (1674–1702) and Governors of West Jersey (1680–1702)

From 1674 to 1702, the Province of New Jersey was divided into East Jersey and West Jersey, each with its own governor. Each had its own constitution: the West Jersey Constitution (1681) and the East Jersey Constitution (1683).

See also: Border between West Jersey and East Jersey

See also: Quintipartite Deed

See also: Keith line

The exact border between West and East Jersey was often disputed. The border between the two sides reached the Atlantic Ocean to the north of present-day Atlantic City. The border line was created by George Keith and can still be seen in the county boundaries between Burlington and Ocean Counties, and between Hunterdon and Somerset Counties. The Keith line runs NNW from the southern part of Little Egg Harbor Township, passing just north of Tuckerton, and reaching upward to a point on the Delaware River which is just north of the Delaware Water Gap. Later, the 1676 Quintipartite Deed helped to lessen the disputes. More accurate surveys and maps were made to resolve property disputes. This resulted in the Thornton line, drawn around 1696, and the Lawrence line, drawn around 1743, which was adopted as the final line for legal purposes.

Dominion of New England

Main page: Dominion of New England

The Dominion of New England was a short-lived administrative union. On May 7, 1688, the Province of New York, the Province of East Jersey, and the Province of West Jersey were added to the Dominion. The capital was located in Boston but, due to its size, New York and the Jerseys were run by the lieutenant governor from New York City. After news of the overthrow of James II by William of Orange in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 reached Boston, the colonists rose up in rebellion, and the dominion was dissolved in 1689..

Royal colony

See also: Governors under Royal Government (1702–1776)

On April 17, 1702, under the rule of Queen Anne, the two sections of the proprietary colony were united and New Jersey became a royal colony. Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, became the first governor of the colony as a royal colony. However, he was an ineffective and corrupt ruler, taking bribes and speculating on land. In 1708, Lord Cornbury was recalled to England. New Jersey was then again ruled by the governors of New York, but this infuriated the settlers of New Jersey, accusing those governors of favoritism to New York. Judge Lewis Morris led the case for a separate governor, and was appointed governor by King George II in 1738.

New York–New Jersey Line War

Main page: New York–New Jersey Line War

Provincial Congress

Main page: Provincial Congress of New Jersey

First state constitution

See also: History of the New Jersey State Constitution

New Jersey's first state constitution was adopted on July 2, 1776. The American Revolutionary War was underway and General George Washington recently had been defeated in New York, putting the state in danger of invasion. The 1776 New Jersey State Constitution was drafted in five days and ratified within the next two days to establish a temporary government, thereby preventing New Jersey from collapsing and descending into anarchy. Among other provisions, it granted unmarried women and blacks who met property requirements the right to vote.

Images for kids

The Province of New Jersey, Divided into East and West, commonly called The Jerseys,1777 map by William Faden

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Province of New Jersey Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.

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Learn Province of New Jersey facts for kids

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The territory which would later become the state of New York was settled by European colonists as part of the New Netherland colony (parts of present-day New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware) under the command of the Dutch West India Company in the Seventeenth Century. These colonists were largely of Dutch, Flemish, Walloon, and German stock, but the colony soon became a "melting pot." In 1664, at the onset of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, English forces under Richard Nicolls ousted the Dutch from control of New Netherland, and the territory became part of several different English colonies. Despite one brief year when the Dutch retook the colony (1673-1674), New York would remain an English possession until the American colonies declared independence in 1776.

With the unification of the two proprietary colonies of East Jersey and West Jersey in 1702, the provinces of New York and the neighboring colony New Jersey shared a royal governor. This arrangement began with the appointment of Queen Anne's cousin, Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury as Royal Governor of New York and New Jersey in 1702, and ended when New Jersey was granted its own royal governor in 1738.

Directors (or governors) of New Netherland (1624-1664)

New Netherland (Dutch: Nieuw-Nederland) was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and the Dutch West India Company. It claimed territories along the eastern coast of North America from the Delmarva Peninsula to southwestern Cape Cod. Settled areas of New Netherland are now constitute the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, and parts of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The provincial capital New Amsterdam was located at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan at Upper New York Bay.

New Netherland was conceived as a private business venture to exploit the North American fur trade. By the 1650s, the colony experienced dramatic growth and became a major port for trade in the North Atlantic. The leader of the Dutch colony was known by the title Director or Director-General. On August 27, 1664, four English frigates commanded by Richard Nicolls sailed into New Amsterdam's harbor and demanded the surrender of New Netherland. This event sparked the Second Anglo-Dutch War, which led to the transfer of the territory to England per the Treaty of Breda.

Portrait

Director or
Director-General

Took office

Left office

Notes

Cornelius Jacobsen May
(fl. 1600s)

1624

1625

Willem Verhulst
(or van der Hulst)
(fl. 1600s)

1625

1626

Peter Minuit
(1580-1638)

1626

1631

Purchased the island of Manhattan from Native Americans on May 24, 1626 for 60 Dutch guilders worth of goods.

Sebastiaen Jansen Krol
(1595-1674)

1632

1633

Commander at Fort Orange (New Netherland) before and after his term as Director General

Wouter van Twiller
(1606-1654)

1633

1638

Previously a Dutch West India Company warehouse clerk, used family connections to the Rensselaer family to gain appointment

purchased Nut Island (Noten Eylant), later called Governor's Island from Canarsee tribe for two axeheads, a string of beads and iron nails

Lost the colony's claim of the Connecticut River valley to New England settlers

Pushed back encroaching Virginia settlers who tried to settle Delaware River valley

Willem Kieft
(1597-1647)

1638

1647

Attempted to drive out Lenape tribe.

Attacks on Pavonia and Corlears Hook, led to Kieft's War.

Fired by the Dutch West India Company in 1647.

Died at sea near Swansea, Wales on September 27, 1647 while returning to Amsterdam aboard the Princess Amelia.

Peter Stuyvesant
(c.1612-1672)

1647

1664

Authorized charter for Communipaw and Bergen (now Jersey City) in 1660.

New Amsterdam, Pavonia, and other settlements attacked by the Susquehannocks during the brief Peach Tree War (1655)

obtained victory the Esopus Wars against the Lenape and Esopus tribes

Surrendered New Netherland to the British.

Also the Director of Curaçao (1642-1664)

Under English control (1664-1783)

Apart from a short period between May 1688 and April 1689, during which New York was part of the Dominion of New England, the territory was known in this period as the Province of New York.

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Portrait

Governor

Took office

Left office

Notes

3

Anthony Colve

1673

1674

Dutch naval captain under restored Netherlands rule

36

John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore
(1730-1809)

1770

1771

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List of colonial governors of New York Facts for Kids

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The territory which would later become the state of New York was settled by European colonists as part of the New Netherland colony (parts of present-day New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware) under the command of the Dutch West India Company in the Seventeenth Century.