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Colonial America: Dates and Events

Key dates, places and events from the first English settlements to the eve of the American Revolution.

79 cardsGrades 3–5, Grades 6–8#colonial#jamestown#pilgrims#13 colonies

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79 cards
  • 1607Date or event
    Jamestown, Virginia, became the first lasting English settlement in North America
  • 1619Date or event
    The first enslaved Africans were brought to English Virginia; the House of Burgesses also first met
  • 1620Date or event
    The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the Mayflower
  • Mayflower CompactDate or event
    A 1620 agreement by the Pilgrims to make fair laws and obey them
  • 1621Date or event
    The Pilgrims and Wampanoag shared a harvest feast, often called the first Thanksgiving
  • 1630Date or event
    Puritans led by John Winthrop founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony
  • 1636Date or event
    Roger Williams founded Rhode Island; Harvard College was also founded
  • 1624Date or event
    The Dutch began settling New Netherland, which later became New York
  • 1664Date or event
    England took New Amsterdam from the Dutch and renamed it New York
  • 1682Date or event
    William Penn founded Pennsylvania with Philadelphia as its city
  • 1732Date or event
    Georgia, the last of the 13 colonies, was founded by James Oglethorpe
  • 1692Date or event
    The Salem witch trials took place in Massachusetts
  • 1754Date or event
    The French and Indian War began in North America
  • 1763Date or event
    The Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War; Britain won Canada
  • Proclamation of 1763Date or event
    British order that kept colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains
  • Thirteen coloniesDate or event
    The British colonies on the Atlantic coast that became the first US states
  • New England ColoniesDate or event
    Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut
  • Middle ColoniesDate or event
    New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware
  • Southern ColoniesDate or event
    Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia
  • Jamestown's early leaderDate or event
    Captain John Smith, who insisted that settlers who did not work would not eat
  • PocahontasDate or event
    A Powhatan girl connected to Jamestown who later married colonist John Rolfe
  • John RolfeDate or event
    Jamestown settler whose tobacco crop made Virginia profitable
  • Cash cropDate or event
    A crop grown mainly to be sold, like tobacco in Virginia
  • SquantoDate or event
    A Patuxet man who taught the Pilgrims to grow corn and fish
  • William BradfordDate or event
    Governor of Plymouth Colony for many years
  • Anne HutchinsonDate or event
    A Puritan woman banished from Massachusetts for her religious ideas
  • Roger WilliamsDate or event
    Believed in separating church and government and in fair treatment of Native Americans
  • Lord BaltimoreDate or event
    Founder of Maryland, planned as a home for English Catholics
  • William PennDate or event
    A Quaker who made Pennsylvania a place of religious freedom
  • QuakersDate or event
    A Christian group that valued peace and equality
  • PuritansDate or event
    English Protestants who wanted to make the church simpler and purer
  • PilgrimsDate or event
    Separatists who left England to worship in their own way
  • SeparatistsDate or event
    People who wanted to break away from the Church of England
  • Indentured servantDate or event
    A person who worked for a set number of years to pay for the trip to America
  • Headright systemDate or event
    Virginia plan that gave land to anyone who paid for a settler's trip
  • House of BurgessesDate or event
    The first elected lawmaking group in the English colonies, started in Virginia in 1619
  • Town meetingDate or event
    A New England gathering where townspeople voted on local matters
  • Triangular tradeDate or event
    Trade routes linking New England, Africa and the West Indies
  • Middle PassageDate or event
    The forced sea voyage that carried enslaved Africans across the Atlantic
  • PlantationDate or event
    A large farm in the South that grew crops like tobacco, rice and indigo
  • Slavery in the coloniesDate or event
    Forced labor of enslaved Africans, legal in all thirteen colonies at the time
  • Great AwakeningDate or event
    A religious revival in the 1730s and 1740s that spread through the colonies
  • Jonathan EdwardsDate or event
    Preacher and leader of the Great Awakening
  • Benjamin FranklinDate or event
    Printer and inventor in Philadelphia; proposed the Albany Plan of Union in 1754
  • Albany PlanDate or event
    Franklin's 1754 idea to unite the colonies for defense
  • Join, or DieDate or event
    Franklin's cartoon of a snake cut in pieces, urging the colonies to unite
  • George WashingtonDate or event
    A young Virginian who fought in the French and Indian War
  • Fort NecessityDate or event
    Small fort in Pennsylvania where Washington fought the French in 1754
  • MercantilismDate or event
    The idea that colonies exist to make the mother country rich
  • Navigation ActsDate or event
    British laws that made colonists trade mainly with Britain
  • Salutary neglectDate or event
    Britain's loose enforcement of colonial laws before 1763
  • CharterDate or event
    A written document from the king giving a colony the right to exist
  • Proprietary colonyDate or event
    A colony owned by one person or a family, like Pennsylvania
  • Royal colonyDate or event
    A colony ruled directly by the king through a governor
  • VirginiaDate or event
    The first of the thirteen colonies, founded at Jamestown
  • Plymouth ColonyDate or event
    The Pilgrims' settlement in Massachusetts, begun in 1620
  • BostonDate or event
    Main city of Massachusetts Bay and a busy colonial port
  • PhiladelphiaDate or event
    Largest colonial city by the 1770s; its name means brotherly love
  • CharlestonDate or event
    Main port of South Carolina
  • WilliamsburgDate or event
    Capital of colonial Virginia from 1699
  • Pennsylvania DutchDate or event
    German-speaking settlers in Pennsylvania
  • HornbookDate or event
    A paddle-shaped board that held a lesson sheet for young colonial students
  • New England PrimerDate or event
    A popular colonial reading book for children
  • ApprenticeDate or event
    A young person who learned a trade by working for a master
  • BlacksmithDate or event
    Colonial worker who made tools and nails from iron
  • CooperDate or event
    Colonial craftsperson who made barrels
  • WampanoagDate or event
    Native nation in what is now Massachusetts who met the Pilgrims
  • Powhatan ConfederacyDate or event
    Alliance of Native nations in tidewater Virginia
  • King Philip's WarDate or event
    1675-1676 conflict between New England colonists and Native nations led by Metacom
  • MetacomDate or event
    Wampanoag leader, called King Philip by the English
  • Fur tradeDate or event
    Trade in animal pelts, important to the French and Dutch in North America
  • New FranceDate or event
    French territory in North America, centered on Quebec
  • QuebecDate or event
    City founded by the French in 1608
  • Samuel de ChamplainDate or event
    French explorer who founded Quebec
  • Henry HudsonDate or event
    English explorer working for the Dutch who sailed into the Hudson River in 1609
  • Peter StuyvesantDate or event
    Last Dutch governor of New Amsterdam
  • St. AugustineDate or event
    Spanish settlement in Florida, founded in 1565, the oldest European-founded city in the US
  • Lost Colony of RoanokeDate or event
    English settlement in 1587 whose people had vanished by 1590
  • Virginia DareDate or event
    First English child born in the Americas, at Roanoke in 1587

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