SOCIAL STUDIES NOTES: GRADE 8
TECHBOOK SECTION 2.1 and 2.2 COLONIES TAKE ROOT 1587-1752
Section 1: The First English Settlements
I. England Seeks Colonies
*-Like most of Europe in the Age of Exploration, England was a monarchy. However, in England, the power of the king or queen was limited by law and by a lawmaking body called Parliament.
-Ever since the 1200s, English law had limited the king’s power. The king could set new taxes only with Parliament’s consent. Still, the king’s powers were much greater than those of Parliament.
*-England, like Spain, Portugal, and France, began to establish colonies in North America in the late 1500s. They were looking for ways to find cheaper goods, and colonies would provide new markets for English products and important raw materials for English industries.
-Two of the earliest English efforts to establish colonies took place during the 1580s. Both were set up on a small island off the coast of North Carolina. The first colony at Roanoke Island was established in 1585, but it was abandoned a year later.
-The second colony is one of the great mysteries of American history. It was set up in 1587. The next year England found itself at war with Spain. No ship was able to visit the Roanoke colony until 1590. By then the colony had disappeared without a trace.
II. Founding of Jamestown
-In 1607, a group of wealthy people made a new attempt to establish an English colony in North America. Eager to gain a share of the wealth of the Americas, they formed the Virginia Company of London.
-Some hoped to discover gold or silver; others expected to trade for furs with the Indians or plant vineyards to grow grapes or mulberry trees to grow silk.
-England’s King James I backed the project. The king granted the merchants a charter to establish a colony called Virginia.
*-The first colonists arrived in Virginia in 1607 and set up a colony called Jamestown. It was England’s first permanent settlement in North America.
*-Jamestown barely survived its first year. Many of the colonists caught diseases such as malaria and died. Others starved because they were not willing to do the hard work of farming. The local people, led by a chief named Powhatan, supplied some food to the colony, but it was not enough.
-By the spring of 1608, only 38 of the original colonists were alive.
*-In the fall of 1608, John Smith was sent from England to lead the poorly run colony. He drew up tough new rules. Under Smith’s firm leadership, the Jamestown colonists cut up timber, put up new buildings, and planted crops.
-Meanwhile hundreds of new colonists arrived. To get more food, Smith raided Native American villages. This angered Powhatan.
-In the fall of 1609, John Smith returned to England after being injured in an explosion. With Smith gone, conditions in Jamestown quickly worsened and so did relations with the Native Americans.
-Powhatan decided it was time to drive the English away. He refused to supply them with food. The winter of 1609-1610 is called the “starving time.” By the spring of 1610, only 60 colonists were alive.
III. Jamestown Prospers
-During the hard times, the Virginia Company continued to send colonists to Jamestown, even offering them free land. Most importantly, it sent new leaders from England to restore order in the colonies.
*-The colonists began to grow tobacco, and this proved to be a dependable cash crop, or source of income. Farmers in Jamestown and nearby settlements in Virginia began planting tobacco in 1612. By the early 1630s, Virginia farmers were selling all the tobacco they could grow.
*-During these years, Virginia developed a tradition of representative government. In 1619, Virginia’s law making body, the House of Burgesses, was elected and met for the first time.
*-The House of Burgesses could make laws and set taxes. However, it shared power with Virginia’s appointed governor who could veto its acts.
*-The House of Burgesses marked the start of representative government in North America.
-In the summer of 1619, a Dutch ship brought the first slaves to Virginia. Initially, slaves had a chance to earn their freedom after working a number of years. Permanent slavery for Africans was not established in Virginia until the last part of the 1600s.
IV. The Plymouth Colony
-In England during the 1500s, people could be punished for their religious beliefs. In the 1530s, when King Henry VIII declared himself the head of the Church of England, everyone was expected to follow the ways of the Church of England.
-About the time Jamestown was settled, a group of people left their homes in eastern England left their homes and settled in Holland. They wanted to separate from the Church of England and practice Christianity in their own way. These people, called Separatists, were often persecuted because of their religion.
-Between 1607 and 1609, several groups of separatists settled in Holland. Although they were allowed to worship as they pleased, they were still not happy.
-In 1620, one group of Separatists decided to leave Holland and settle in Virginia. They are the people we know today as the Pilgrims.
-In September 1620, about 100 Pilgrims sailed for Virginia aboard a ship called the Mayflower. However, they were blown off course, and landed in what today is Massachusetts. They called their new home Plymouth, after a port city in England.
*-Before going ashore, 41 adult men signed a document called the Mayflower Compact. It called for a government that would make and follow “just and equal” laws. Officeholders would be elected by the colony’s adult males.
*-The Mayflower Compact was the first document in which American colonists claimed a right to govern themselves.
-The Pilgrims had a very difficult first winter in Plymouth. They had arrived too late to plant crops and did not have enough food. During the winter of 1620-1621, half the colonists died of hunger or disease.
-Conditions improved in the spring of 1621. A local Native American chief gave the Pilgrims some food, and another Native American, Squanto, brought them native plants-corn, beans, and pumpkins- and showed them how to plant them.
-In the fall of 1621, the Pilgrims set aside a day to give thanks for their good fortune. Today’s Thanksgiving holiday celebrates that occasion.
Section 2: The New England Colonies
I. Geography of New England
-New England is in the northeast corner of the United States. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island make up southern New England. New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine make up the northern part.
-The Connecticut River, the region’s longest river, flows from New Hampshire and Vermont through Massachusetts and Connecticut before reaching the sea. Some of the richest fishing grounds in the world are in New England.
*-Winters in New England tend to be long and snowy. Summers are short and warm. Because of this, early colonists in the region caught fewer diseases and lived longer than the colonists in Virginia.
II. Puritans in Massachusetts Bay
*-Similar to the Pilgrims, a group known as the Puritans had disagreements with the Church of England. Rather than split off from the established church, they wanted to reform it.
-In the 1620s, King Charles I opposed their movement and persecuted them. Consequently, a number of Puritans left England and came to North America.
-In 1630, about 900 Puritans set off in eleven ships. They had formed the Massachusetts Bay Company, which had received a charter to establish settlements in what are now Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The Puritans were led by John Winthrop, a respected landowner and lawyer.
*-In a sermon, John Winthrop said, “We must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill.” He meant that the Puritans must live good lives if they hoped to set an example for others to follow,
*-The main Puritan town was Boston, which was located on an excellent harbor. By 1643, about 20,000 people lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
-By the mid-1630s, Massachusetts Bay Colony had an elected assembly, the General Court. Voting was limited to adult male members of the Puritan Church. Both the General Court and the colony’s governor were elected each year.
III. New Colonies
-Disagreements about religion led to the founding of other colonies in New England.
-Roger Williams, a minister of a church in the town of Salem, believed the Puritans should split entirely from the Church of England. He also specified that colonists should pay Native Americans for their land.
-Williams was forced to leave Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635. He moved to what is now Rhode Island where he bought land from Native Americans and founded the town of Providence.
-In 1644, colonists in Rhode Island received a charter from the king to govern themselves. They decided that Rhode Island would have no established church. People of all faiths could worship as they saw fit.
-In 1638, a Boston woman named Anne Hutchinson questioned some of the Puritan’s teachings. She was put on trial and expelled from Massachusetts. She established a settlement on an island that is now a part of Rhode Island.
*-Thomas Hooker, a minister, also disagreed with Puritan leaders. He left Massachusetts with about 100 followers in 1636 and founded the town of Hartford, Connecticut.
*-In 1639, the colonists drew up the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut which established a new government with an elected legislature and governor.
*-Since the United States Constitution was based, in part, on the Fundamental Orders, Connecticut was called the “Constitution State.”
-John Wheelwright was also forced to leave Massachusetts because he agreed with some of Anne Hutchinson’s views. In 1638, Wheelwright and some followers founded the town of Exeter, New Hampshire.
IV. Growth and Change
-The Puritans believed that towns and churches should manage their own affairs and that people should work hard and live in strong, stable families.
*-In each Puritan town, an assembly of townspeople made decisions and rules concerning the business of the town. In these town meetings, they elected government officials and passed local laws. They also set taxes and spent money on schools and public improvements.
*-Voting in town meetings was restricted to white males who owned property and were in good standing with the town church.
*-Because the New England colonies were so far away from England, it was very difficult for the king to govern them. As a result, New Englanders were able to establish their own government and make many of their own laws without the king’s interference.
-New England families earned their livelihoods in many different ways. Farmers grew crops and made leather goods and other products. Fishers caught cod and other fish that were shipped to customers in Europe. A shipbuilding industry provided many jobs.
-By the 1670s, the Native American population was decreasing mainly because large numbers of them had died from diseases that they caught from Europeans. By 1670, there were only 12,000 Native Americans in New England, one tenth of their population 100 years earlier.
*-In 1675, a major conflict erupted. Opponents of England were led by Metacom, the chief of the Wampanoag, who was also known by his English name, King Philip.
*-Metacom’s goal was to stop the Puritan expansion. Other Native American groups from Maine to Rhode Island joined the war, some siding with the settlers.
*-The fighting lasted a year and cost thousands of lives. Metacom and his allies destroyed 12 English towns. The uprising ended in 1676 when Metacom was killed.
*-As a result of King Philip’s War, about 3,000 Native Americans were killed, and Native Amercans in the area were nearly wiped out. Also, any friendship between the colonists and Native Americans was destroyed.
*-The war’s end left the English colonies free to expand.
-As a new generation was born in North America, the stern religious rules of the original settlers had less influence over the people who lived there.