Internet Resources
- Colonial SettlementsWhen the London Company sent out its first expedition to begin colonizing Virginia on December 20, 1606, it was by no means the first European attempt to exploit North America.
- Everyday Life in Colonial AmericaWhen North America was first discovered, almost every imperial European power began to settle this New World. Initially, British settlers arrived in the regions of New England, the Chesapeake area, and what is now considered the South, while French holdings included areas west of the Mississippi River such as Louisiana, Illinois, and much of Canada, with the Spanish taking hold of Florida, Texas, and much of the Caribbean.
- The Thirteen American ColoniesIn the 1500s, North America was a wilderness. A few Spaniards lived in St. Augustine, Florida. French traders were in Nova Scotia. But the continent still belonged to Native Americans.
Reference, Archives & Primary Sources
- Plymouth Pilgrimage- Credo ReferencePlymouth Colony was the second permanent English settlement in North America, after Jamestown. Settled just north of Cape Cod in 1620, the colony was founded by Separatists seeking to avoid religious persecution in England.
- 13 Colonies: Credo ReferenceA Credo Reference landing page on the 13 colonies. This page includes links to reference works, journal articles, and a mind map.
The Founding of the 13 Colonies | History
The U.S. is 50 states strong today, but it began as 13 small colonies. Can you name them?
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh79MXVZsds
Developing an American colonial identity
How British were the British colonies in North America in 1754? In this video, Kim Kutz Elliott discusses how the British colonies participated in political, social, cultural, and economic exchanges with Great Britain that encouraged both stronger bonds with Britain and resistance to Britain’s control.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxiSd6HW75M
Perspectives
Mayflower
"Vivid and remarkably fresh...Philbrick has recast the Pilgrims for the ages."--The New York Times Book Review Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History New York Times Book Review Top Ten books of the Year With a new preface marking the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower. How did America begin? That simple question launches the acclaimed author of In the Hurricane's Eye and Valiant Ambition on an extraordinary journey to understand the truth behind our most sacred national myth: the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. As Philbrick reveals in this electrifying history of the Pilgrims, the story of Plymouth Colony was a fifty-five year epic that began in peril and ended in war. New England erupted into a bloody conflict that nearly wiped out the English colonists and natives alike. These events shaped the existing communites and the country that would grow from them.
A Kingdom Strange
In 1587, John White and 117 men, women, and children landed off the coast of North Carolina on Roanoke Island, hoping to carve a colony from fearsome wilderness. A mere month later, facing quickly diminishing supplies and a fierce native population, White sailed back to England in desperation. He persuaded the wealthy Sir Walter Raleigh, the expedition's sponsor, to rescue the imperiled colonists, but by the time White returned with aid the colonists of Roanoke were nowhere to be found. He never saw his friends or family again.In this gripping account based on new archival material, colonial historian James Horn tells for the first time the complete story of what happened to the Roanoke colonists and their descendants. A compellingly original examination of one of the great unsolved mysteries of American history, 'A Kingdom Strange' will be essential reading for anyone interested in our national origins.
Making Haste from Babylon
Backed by privateering aristocrats, London merchants, and xenophobic politicians, they were sectarian religious radicals who lived double and treble lives: entrepreneurs as well as evangelicals, rebels as well as Christian idealists. Far from the storybook figures of American mythology, the Pilgrims were complex men and women, and Making Haste from Babylon tells their story in unrivaled depth. Within a decade of landing, and despite crisis and catastrophe, the Pilgrims built a thriving settlement at New Plymouth, based on trade in beaver fur, corn, and cattle, and in doing so they laid the foundations for Massachusetts, New England, and a new nation. Using a wealth of previously untapped or neglected evidence--from archives in England, Ireland, and the United States--British author Nick Bunker gives a vivid, strikingly original account of the Mayflower project. From the rural kingdom of James I to industrial Holland and the beaver ponds of Maine, he weaves a rich narrative combining religion, politics, money, science, and the sea. A meticulously researched, revelatory book that restores the potency of the Mayflower story by rediscovering the full international context of its time.
The First Thanksgiving
ForeWord 2013 Book of the Year Award Finalist (Adult Nonfiction, History)The Pilgrims' celebration of the first Thanksgiving is a keystone of America's national and spiritual identity. But is what we've been taught about them or their harvest feast what actually happened? And if not, what difference does it make? Through the captivating story of the birth of this quintessentially American holiday, veteran historian Tracy McKenzie helps us to better understand the tale of America's origins--and for Christians, to grasp the significance of this story and those like it. McKenzie avoids both idolizing and demonizing the Pilgrims, and calls us to love and learn from our flawed yet fascinating forebears.The First Thanksgiving is narrative history at its best, and promises to be an indispensable guide to the interplay of historical thinking and Christian reflection on the meaning of the past for the present.
From Columbus to Colonial America
The New World, as the land that comprises the United States was once known, held the promise of opportunity and changing fortunes for those who discovered and colonized it. Even before becoming an independent nation, the land proved to be a bounteous yet challenging home. This lively volume recounts the early history of America, using a diverse selection of the eraOCOs personal and historic documents as guideposts.
Freedom Just Around the Corner
A powerful reinterpretation of the founding of America, by a Pulitzer Prize -- winning historian "The creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past four hundred years," declares Walter McDougall in his preface to Freedom Just Around the Corner. With this statement begins McDougall's most ambitious, original, and uncompromising of histories. McDougall marshals the latest scholarship and writes in a style redolent of passion, pathos, and humor in pursuit of truths often obscured in books burdened with political slants. From the origins of English expansion under Henry VIII to the founding of the United States to the rollicking election of President Andrew Jackson, McDougall rescues from myth or oblivion the brave, brilliant, and flawed people who made America great: women and men, native-born and immigrant; German, Latin, African, and British; as well as farmers, engineers, planters, merchants; Protestants, Freemasons, Catholics, and Jews; and -- last but not least -- the American scofflaws, speculators, rogues, and demagogues. With an insightful approach to the nearly 250 years spanning America's beginnings, McDougall offers his readers an understanding of the uniqueness of the "American character" and how it has shaped the wide-ranging course of historical events. McDougall explains that Americans have always been in a unique position of enjoying "more opportunity to pursue their ambitions...than any other people in history." Throughout Freedom Just Around the Corner the character of the American people shines, a character built out of a freedom to indulge in the whole panoply of human behavior. The genius behind the success of the United States is founded on the complex, irrepressible American spirit. A grand narrative rich with new details and insights about colonial and early national history, Freedom Just Around the Corner is the first installment of a trilogy that will eventually bring the story of America up to the present day -- story as epic, bemusing, and brooding as Bob Dylan's "Jokerman," the ballad that inspires its titles.
Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower
From their self-imposed exile in Holland to their perilous crossing of the Atlantic, to their first year in the new world, Desperate Crossing is the definitive story of how the Pilgrims came to live and prosper in an unfamiliar land.
Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown
Pocahontas may be the most famous Native American who ever lived, but during the settlement of Jamestown, and for two centuries afterward, the great chiefs Powhatan and Opechancanough were the subjects of considerably more interest and historical documentation than the young woman. It was Opechancanough who captured the foreign captain "Chawnzmit"--John Smith. Smith gave Opechancanough a compass, described to him a spherical earth that revolved around the sun, and wondered if his captor was a cannibal. Opechancanough, who was no cannibal and knew the world was flat, presented Smith to his elder brother, the paramount chief Powhatan. The chief, who took the name of his tribe as his throne name (his personal name was Wahunsenacawh), negotiated with Smith over a lavish feast and opened the town to him, leading Smith to meet, among others, Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas.
The Quakers, The Dutch, and the Ladies
In which John Green teaches you about some of the colonies that were not in Virginia or Massachussetts. Old New York was once New Amsterdam. Why they changed it, I can say; ENGLISH people just liked it better that way, and when the English took New Amsterdam in 1643, that's just what they did. Before the English got there though, the colony was full of Dutch people who treated women pretty fairly, and allowed free black people to hold jobs.