By Slade VanDeusen
St. Augustine, Florida, founded by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, becomes the first permanent European settlement in North America, after an attack on Fort Carolina, a French Huguenot settlement, results in the deaths of all male inhabitants.
Sir Walter Raleigh, half brother of Humphrey Gilbert who died trying to colonize Newfoundland the year before, sends a group of colonists to Roanoke Island in Virginia (named for Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen). The next year he sends more colonists to the island. During the voyage in 1585, Sir Ralph Lane discovers the Chesapeake Bay.
The first English child, Virginia Dare, is born in North America at Roanoke Island on August 18. A new group of 150 settlers lands on Roanoke Island, but they arrive too late in the season to plant crops.
When John White returns to Roanoke Island, after having been delayed by war with Spain, he discovers the entire colony has disappeared without a trace, including members of his own family, among them his young granddaughter, Virginia Dare. The colony may have been wiped out by Indians in the region. The fate of the Lost Colony remains a mystery.
English sailor Bartholomew Gosnold explores the coast of New England from present day Maine to Cape Cod. He settles for a time in Cape Cod, names Martha’s Vineyard, trades with native inhabitants of the area, and later returns to England with a cargo of furs and sassafras.
Captain Christopher Newport sails into the Chesapeake Bay and up a river he names for King James I. On May 13, he founds the colony of Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America.
The first legislative assembly in the British Colonies, the House of Burgesses, meets for the first time in Jamestown, Virginia.
A cargo of twenty African slaves arrives on a Dutch ship at Jamestown. The Dutch privateer had taken the slaves from a Spanish ship.
One hundred Pilgrims arrive on the Mayflower on November 11 off Cape Cod. Realizing they are outside the jurisdiction of the London Company,which had issued them a charter to settle in America, the Pilgrims establish a colony at Plymouth and draw up the Mayflower Compact to govern the colony. Although aided by local Indians who share food with the new settlers, about half the Pilgrims die of disease and starvation the first winter.
Over 1000 Congregationalist Puritans, led by Governor John Winthrop, found the Massachusetts Bay colony, settling Boston and nearby town.
King Charles I of England grants a charter to Cecil Calvert for a proprietary colony to be known as Maryland. This is the first English proprietary colony (one privately owned by a family) in the Americas.
Roger Williams, a clergyman banned from Massachusetts Bay colony, which he found intolerant of religious freedom, establishes the settlement of Providence and the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
England’s King Charles II charters Carolina, a large territory stretching from Virginia to Florida and from sea to sea, to eight of his loyal courtiers. In 1712 the territory is divided into two colonies, North and South Carolina.
The Black Death plague hits Amsterdam, Holland, killing 24,000 people. It spreads to other European cites and towns, and hits London in 1665, resulting in almost 70,000 deaths. Nearly a half million people flee the city until the plague subsides
English settlers, under the leadership of William Sayle, arrive in Carolina and found Charleston. They are soon joined by British planters and African slaves from Barbados and by French Huguenots and others seeking religious freedom.
William Penn, a religious nonconformist espousing the cause of the Society of Friends (Quakers) comes to establish Pennsylvania, on a large land grant he received the year before from Charles II. One third of the 100 Quakers die of smallpox during the two-month journey.
Sieur de La Salle (Robert Cavelier) explores the Mississippi River and claims the vast territory drained by the Mississippi for France, naming it “Louisiana” in honor of the French king Louis XIV. France and Spain would lay claim to this territory at different times until 1803, when France sells the land to the United States in one of the greatest land deals in history.
Witchcraft hysteria begins in Salem, Massachusetts. Over the next two years, 20 persons are executed after trials find them guilty of being witches
The last of the original thirteen English colonies is chartered and settled the following year by James Oglethorpe, a philanthropist. The colony is a haven for English debtors and serves as a buffer between Spanish-controlled Florida and the Carolinas.