50 Fun Facts About Thirteen Colonies

Which was the first of the thirteen colonies to be established?

Jamestown was founded in 1607 by the London Company; Georgia, the last, came in 1732.

Which colony, chartered in 1732, completed the thirteen?

James Oglethorpe and fellow trustees secured the royal charter on June 9, 1732.

How many of the thirteen colonies were traditionally grouped as New England colonies?

New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Connecticut; the Middle Colonies also numbered four and the South five.

Which of these was one of the Middle Colonies?

The Middle Colonies were New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, carved from the former Dutch New Netherland.

The Middle Colonies were established on the land of which former European colony?

Richard Nicolls captured lightly defended New Amsterdam in 1664 and the rest of the Dutch colony quickly followed.

Which king granted charters to the Plymouth Company and London Company in 1606?

The London Company's Jamestown survived; the Plymouth Company's Popham Colony on the Kennebec River lasted barely a year.

Jamestown survived its brutal early years by turning to which cash crop?

The London Virginia Company had been looking for gold and found little; disease and starvation killed many early settlers.

Who received the 1632 charter for the Province of Maryland?

Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, got it from Charles I; his father had been a prominent Catholic official who encouraged Catholic emigration.

On what ship did the Pilgrims sail to America in 1620?

On arrival they drew up the Mayflower Compact binding themselves into a single community, with William Bradford as their main leader.

Before sailing for America, the Pilgrims had first moved to which country?

They were Puritan separatists who wanted physical distance from a Church of England they saw as corrupted.

Who founded Providence Plantations in 1636 after being banished from Massachusetts Bay?

He preached religious tolerance and separation of church and state, settling on land provided by the Narragansett sachem Canonicus.

What is the modern name of the island where Anne Hutchinson's group settled in 1637?

Portsmouth and Newport grew there; together with Providence and Warwick they were united by royal charter in 1663.

Which Quaker founded Pennsylvania as a proprietary colony in 1681?

Philadelphia became the largest city in the colonies, with about 30,000 people and an excellent port.

Which parliamentarian proposed a southern colony for England's "worthy poor"?

He hoped for a utopian colony that banned slavery, but it stayed sparsely populated and became a crown colony in 1752.

Oglethorpe's colony was meant as an alternative to what English institution?

The trustees' charter was dated June 9, 1732; they gave it up in 1752.

Who purchased Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626 and founded New Amsterdam?

He later led former Dutch West India Company men in founding New Sweden in the Delaware Valley in 1638.

Which country planted a colony in the Delaware Valley in 1638?

It was conquered by the Dutch in 1655 while Sweden was busy with the Second Northern War.

Which English commander captured New Amsterdam in 1664?

The 1667 Treaty of Breda confirmed English control; the Dutch gave up their claim for good at Westminster in 1674.

Which 1674 agreement ended the Dutch colonial presence in America?

The Dutch had briefly retaken parts of New Netherland during the Third Anglo-Dutch War.

The two Jerseys, East and West, were reunited as one province in which year?

Both had been created in 1674 from lands that were formerly part of New York.

Charleston, South Carolina, was originally named for which king?

The Lords Proprietors got their Carolina charter in 1663, but the settlement was not established until 1670.

In what year did the king make North and South Carolina separate crown colonies?

The province had been split into two proprietary colonies in 1712 after years of feuding among the proprietors' heirs.

Which failed settlement, established in 1585, was found abandoned in 1590?

Carolina was the second attempted English settlement south of Virginia; Roanoke was the first.

Which king consolidated the New England colonies into a single dominion in 1685?

Governor Edmund Andros was overthrown and the Dominion of New England dissolved in 1689 after the Glorious Revolution.

Which governor ran the short-lived Dominion of New England?

New York, West Jersey and East Jersey were added to the dominion in 1688, a year before it collapsed.

Maine remained part of Massachusetts until it achieved statehood in which year?

New Hampshire, by contrast, was given its own separate charter back in 1679.

Roughly what was the colonial population on the eve of the American Revolution?

It had grown from about 2,000 in 1625, largely displacing Native Americans along the way.

By 1770, the thirteen colonies produced what share of the British Empire's economic output?

More than 90 percent of colonists were farmers, yet Philadelphia, New York and Boston each topped 16,000 people by 1760.

What economic policy had Britain run its colonies under for its own benefit?

Trade was concentrated inside the Empire and enforced by the Navigation Acts, which colonists dodged through smuggling.

Which 1754 gathering saw Benjamin Franklin propose a unified colonial government?

The Albany Plan for coordinating defense was rejected by the leaders of most colonies.

The French and Indian War was the American theater of which European conflict?

Unusually, this war started in North America and spread to Europe rather than the other way round.

What did colonists call the War of the Austrian Succession?

Colonists were angry when Britain handed captured Louisbourg back to France in 1748 in exchange for Madras.

The War of Jenkins' Ear was sparked by an incident involving a mariner of what nationality?

Hundreds of North Americans volunteered for Admiral Vernon's assault on Cartagena de Indias in the war against Spain.

The 1763 Treaty of Paris gave Britain all French territory east of which river?

France had secretly handed Louisiana west of the river to Spain the year before; Britain also gained Spanish Florida.

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 barred settlement west of which mountains?

The land was designated an Indian Reserve; settlers ignored it, but resented that it was issued without consulting them.

Which was the first of the new taxes Britain imposed after the French and Indian War?

The Sugar Act of 1764 was followed by the Currency Act, the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767.

The Stamp Act of 1765 taxed newspapers and what else?

Printers took strong exception and spread anti-tax literature, fuelling the "no taxation without representation" argument.

The 1773 Tea Act cut taxes on tea sold by which trading firm?

Lord North hoped colonists would accept the principle of British taxation; Boston's Sons of Liberty dumped the tea instead.

Which 1774 laws greatly restricted self-government in Massachusetts?

They let commanders claim homes for troops and moved trials of soldiers and crown officials to England.

Which general was sent to serve as Governor of Massachusetts in 1774?

Ordered to seize Patriot arsenals, he sent troops toward Concord, triggering the battles of April 1775.

How many colonies sent representatives to the First Continental Congress in 1774?

Georgia held out until the Second Continental Congress the following year.

What boycott did the delegates of 1774 agree to instead of attacking Boston?

It worked: the value of British imports dropped dramatically.

Where did Jefferson draft the Declaration of Independence in June 1776?

He wrote it largely alone in 17 days on the second floor of a three-story home at 700 Market Street, now the Declaration House.

Which man was NOT on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration?

The five were Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Livingston and Sherman; the committee handed Jefferson the first draft.

How many colonial colleges were chartered before the Revolution?

Seven became Ivy League schools; William & Mary and Queen's College (Rutgers) later went public.

Which colonial school was the only one outside New England and the Middle Colonies?

Southern families generally relied on tutors or sent their children to school in England.

In which two colonies did colonists, rather than London, elect the governor?

Both were charter colonies; elsewhere governors were royal or proprietary appointees with absolute veto power.

In 1680, which was the only royal colony among the thirteen?

By 1720 half the colonies were under royal governors appointed from London.

Which Boston lawyer argued in 1761 that Writs of Assistance violated colonists' rights?

He lost, but John Adams later wrote, "Then and there the child Independence was born."

Which religious revival swept the colonies in the 1740s?

Baptists and Methodists grew rapidly during it.