The first colony to be founded by English settlers on the North American territory was on the Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, in the 1580s. The settlers stayed for a year then returned home. A second group arrived here in 1587, but they mysteriously disappeared. Over the course of the next century, the English established 13 colonies: Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Get a quick view of the chronological order in which the first English colonies were founded on American soil with our condensed visual timeline below: