ral of the Dutch West India Company, from the local Indian tribes for goods and trinkets worth 60 Dutch Guilders (1980 US$ 24).
22/4/1625, Fort Amsterdam was on the southern tip of Manhattan Island founded by Dutch colonists from the Dutch West India Company.
1624, Willaim Tucker became the first Black person to be born in North America, in Jamestown, Virginia.
1623, The earliest European settlements in New Hampshire were founded. John Mason named the colony after his native county of Hampshire, England.
1621, The Dutch West India Company was formed. It was a group of merchants responsible for the settlement of New Netherland, now New York. The Company was wound up in 1674 (see 10/11/1674).
1/6/1621, The Pilgrim Fathers issued the Mayflower Compact, organising formal rules for their governance.
21/12/1620, The Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock.
6/9/1620. The 101 Pilgrim Fathers, mostly uneducated farmers, set sail from Plymouth on the Mayflower, captained by Myles Standish. They arrived at Plymouth Rock, off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on 21/12/1620. They were fleeing religious persecution, and had originally fled from Britain to Holland in 1608 to escape Catholic persecution by King Charles I. They settled in Leyden where they were free to worship but did not adapt to Dutch society, and decided to migrate to America.
29/6/1620. After earlier denouncing tobacco as a health hazard, King James I banned the growing of tobacco in Britain. However he gave the Virginia Company a monopoly of tobacco growing in exchange for a tax of one shilling per pound of tobacco.
30/7/1619, The first meeting of representatives in America, the House of Burgesses, met at Jamestown, Virginia.
4/12/1619, 38 colonists from Berkeley Parish, England, disembarked in Virginia and gave thanks to God; this is considered by some to be the first Thanksgiving in the Americas.
28/7/1615, Samuel de Champlain discovered Lake Huron.
12/9/1609, Henry Hudson sailed his ship, Half Moon, from New York up-river to Albany, along the river named after him.
25/3/1609. English navigator Henry Hudson, commissioned by Dutch East India Company, set off on his third and final attempt to find the North West Passage to the Spice Islands of the East.
13/5/1607. Captain John Smith landed on the Virginia coast with 103 cavaliers in three ships and founded the first permanent English settlement in the New World, Jamestown. See 19/12/1606.
19/12/1606, Colonists set out from England for Virginia.
28/1/1596. Sir Francis Drake died of dysentery and was buried at sea off Porto Bello, Panama.
17/8/1590, John White, Governor of Roanoke Island, returned to find the British colony deserted and the first European child born in America vanished. The word ‘Croatoan’ was left behind.
18/8/1587. Virginia Dare became the first child born of English parents in America. She was born on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, seven days after Sir Walter Raleigh’s second expedition landed. The parents were called Ananias and Ellinor Dare, and named the child Virginia in honour of the virgin Queen of England and the fledgling colony.
11/6/1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed from Plymouth, with the approval of Queen Elizabeth I, to found a British colony in America.
26/9/1580. Sir Francis Drake arrived back in Plymouth in the 100 ton Golden Hind (originally The Pelican) after 33 months, the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world. See 13/12/1577 and 4/4/1581.
17/6/1579. Sir Francis Drake anchored the Golden Hind just north of what was to become San Francisco Bay; he named the area New Albion, claiming it for Britain.
13/12/1577. Sir Francis Drake left Plymouth on his voyage round the world. See 26/9/1580.
28/8/1565, The Spanish established the settlement of St Augustine, Florida.
27/5/1562, Jean Ribaut, leading an expedition to found a Huguenot colony in New France, founded Port Royal, South Carolina, USA.
21/5/1542, Hernando de Soto, the first European to cross the Mississippi, died on the return journey.
8/5/1541, The River Mississippi was first seen by Europeans. The Spanish Conquistador, Hernando