grim Father William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth County in Massachusetts, died.
3/5/1654. The first toll bridge in America was licensed to Richard Thurley at Newbury River. There was a charge for animals but not for people.
14/10/1651. Massachusetts passed laws forbidding the poor to wear excessively luxurious dress.
1649, Puritans fleeing religious persecution in Virginia established the town of Annapolis. It was originally known as Anne Arundel Town, after the wife of the second Lord Baltimore, Governor of Maryland. It was renamed after Princess Anne of England in 1695.
5/4/1649, Death of John Winthrop, first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company.
26/5/1647. A new law in Massachusetts banned Catholic priests from the colony. The penalty was banishment, or death for a second offence.
14/10/1644. The Quaker Leader William Penn, founder of the State of Pennsylvania, was born in London, the son of an admiral.
1/11/1642, Death of Jean Nicolet (born ca. 1598), French explorer of the Lake Michigan area (now Wisconsin).
24/1/1639, American settlers meeting in Hartford voted to adopt a new constitution called the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. It allowed colonists to administer their own laws and to raise taxes, and made no mention of allegiance to the British Crown.
26/5/1637, Fort Pequod, Connecticut, was destroyed
See also Education; 1636, Harvard University.
4/7/1636, The city of Providence, Rhode island, was founded.
4/3/1634. Samuel Cole opened the first tavern in Boston, Massachusetts.
30/9/1630, The first death sentence in America. John Billington was executed for murder in New Plymouth.
17/9/1630. The city of Boston, USA, officially received its name. It was named after Boston, Lincolnshire, from where the Puritan leaders of the town had come.
12/6/1630, The fleet of the Massachusetts Bay Company docked at Salem, with 700 Puritan colonists on board.
4/3/1629, Massachusetts Bay Colony was granted a Royal Charter
6/5/1626, Manhattan Island, now part of New York, was bought by Peter Minuit, Director-General 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