Colonial America
Channel: armycblwildcat
Date: 2017-09-21

The English tried to settle at Roanoke Island in 1585. The settlement did not last, and no one knows what happened to the people. In 1607, the first lasting English settlement was made at Jamestown, Virginia, by John Smith, John Rolfe and other Englishmen interested in gold and adventure. In its early years, many people in Virginia died of disease and starvation. The colony lasted because it made money by planting tobacco. In 1621, a group of Englishmen called the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts. A bigger colony was built at Massachusetts Bay by the Puritans in 1630.The Pilgrims and the Puritans were interested in making a better society, not looking for gold. They called this ideal society a "city on a hill". A man named Roger Williams left Massachusetts after disagreeing with the Puritans, and started the colony of Rhode Island in 1636. England was not the only country to settle what would become the United States. In the 1500s, Spain built a fort at Saint Augustine, Florida. France settled Louisiana, and the area around the Great Lakes. The Dutch settled New York, which they called New Netherland. Other areas were settled by Scotch-Irish, Germans, and Swedes. However, in time England controlled all of the colonies, and most American colonists adopted the English way of life. The growth of the colonies was not good for Native Americans. Many of them died of smallpox, a disease brought to America by the Europeans. The ones who lived lost their lands to the colonists. The Thirteen Colonies before the American Revolution In the early 1700s, there was a religious movement in the colonies called the Great Awakening. Preachers such as Jonathan Edwards preached sermons. One of them was called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". The Great Awakening may have led to the thinking used in the American Revolution. By 1733, there were thirteen colonies. New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston were the largest cities and main ports at that time. From 1754 to 1763, England and France fought a war over their land in America called the Seven Years' War or the French and Indian War, which the English won. After the war, they issued the Proclamation of 1763. It said that people who lived in the thirteen colonies could not live west of the Appalachian Mountains. Many colonists who wanted to move to the frontier did not like the Proclamation.