1500-1600s

• 1492


  -Christopher Columbus arrives in the Americas, he lands in the Caribbean

  -Spain sets up an encomienda system
• 1587


  Sir Walter Raleigh attempts to settle the colony of Roanoke, but the colony mysteriously disappeared, dubbed the "lost colony"
• 1607


  -Jamestown, the first permanent American colony is founded

  -Joint stock companies are created, the Virginia Company being one

  -Captain John Smith is credited for Jamestowns success
• 1609-1610


  -Jamestown creates relationships with native tribes

  -Tobacco is the leading cash crop of this colony

  -Indentured servents become popular
• 1619


  -The House of Burgesses is founded, dubbed the first form of government in the colonies

  -Slavery starts to become popular
• 1620


  -Separatists of England leave and arrive in Massachusets in a ship known as the "Mayflower"

  -Pilgrims arrive and settle in a place dubbed Plymouth

  -On the Mayflower, the pilgrims wrote the Mayflower Compact, one of the first forms of constitutions
• 1629


  -Massachusetts Bay Colony is founded by John Winthrop for Puritans

  -Roger Williams and Anne Hutchison are excommunicated from MBC
• 1629-1642


  -Immigration from Britain to the colonies occurs, dubbed the "Great Migration"
• 1635


  -Lord Baltimore founds Maryland, a colony for Christians and Catholics
• 1624


  -New York is founded
• 1681


  -Pennsylvania is founded by William Penn, the colony follows the Quaker religion
• Proprietary Colonies


  A colony that has been given to a family or individual who then controls the entire colony
• Royal Colonies


  Colonies where the King directly controls the colony
• 1676


  -Bacons Rebellion occurs, a rebellion started by Nathaniel Bacon against the governor William Berkely
• Governor William Berkely


  -Governor of Virginia for more than a decade

  -Implemented policies that benefited the elite and neglected backcountry/worker people
• Nathaniel Bacon


  -Was a working-class man

  -led farmers and indentured servants in a raid against natives to drive out Governor William Berkely
• 1692


  -In MBC, many were accused of witchcraft

  -A year-long trial knows as the "Salem Witch Trials" occurred in which more than a dozen died