Mr. Kersey.org - Mr. Kersey's Lecture Notes

The English Colonies: Who Came and Why

(Lecture Notes from Mr. Kersey's 8th Grade U.S. History Class)

The London and Plymouth companies got company charters from the king, which meant they had permission to start colonies in the new world.
These companies were Joint Stock companies, actual businesses that wanted to make a profit.
A Joint Stock company is a business where a number of people contribute money by buying shares, and would split the profits according to how many shares each person had.
The shareholders wanted to make money in the New World by finding gold, a path to Asia, or by trading furs.

The London Company founded the colony at Jamestown in 1607.
Jamestown was a rotten place for a colony, because it had bad soil and disease carrying mosquitoes.
The first group of colonists were a bunch of rich Englishmen, who wanted to hunt for gold all the time.
The colony began to run out of food, and John Smith took over and made the colonists work to survive.
By the end of the first winter, half of the colonists died from starvation or sickness, and the colony was a flop because they did not make any money.

John Rolfe, the guy who married Pocohontas, discovered he could grow good tobacco at Jamestown.
Tobacco could be grown at Jamestown and sold in England for a lot of money, because it was cheaper than Spanish tobacco.
The Jamestown colony finally began to be a success because now the colonists had a way to make money.

The Headright System was started to get people to come to Jamestown; each time you paid for yourself or another person to come to the New World, you got 50 acres of land.
Indentured Servants were people who could not pay their own way to the New World, so they signed a contract saying they would work for a certain number of years for the person who paid for them to come to the New World.
Because growing tobacco was so successful, more and more servants were needed at Jamestown, so they began to use Africans as slaves.

Because the Jamestown colonists had taken so much of the land of the Powhatan Indians, they became very angry.
One day in 1622, the Indians attacked the colonists, killing 350 people. This was called the Jamestown Massacre.
Because the Colonists had guns, they nearly wiped out the Indians as revenge for the Jamestown Massacre.
King James heard of the Jamestown Massacre, and decided to make Jamestown a Royal Colony, that is, property of the King.

By the late 1600’s, there was a large population of poor colonists in Virginia, many of whom were former indentured servants.
Many of these poor colonists complained about taxes, and lack of farmland.
Many poor colonists began building farms in Indian territory, ignoring treaties.
In 1676 Nathanial Bacon lead a group of slaves, freed slaves, and former servants in an attack on friendly Indians, killing many. Then they attacked Jamestown.
Bacon’s Rebellion actually contributed to the growth of slavery in Virginia.

The Separatists were a religious group who were ridiculed in England because of their beliefs, and wanted to go somewhere where they would be left alone.
The Plymouth Company lost the race to build the first colony, so they gave the Separatists a chance to start a second colony in the New World.
The Separatists called themselves Pilgrims because a pilgrim is a person who goes on a religious journey.
The Pilgrims started the Plymouth colony at Massachusetts in November of 1620.

The Pilgrims decided to form their own government, so they wrote down the rules and called it the Mayflower Compact.
The first winter was difficult, but not as bad as Jamestown, since the climate was healthier, and the Indians were friendlier.
The Plymouth colony never made any money because the Pilgrims were not interested in making money.
The shareholders of the Plymouth company, were afraid the King would make Plymouth a Royal Colony too, and wanted to get back some of the money they invested; so they sold the Colony Charter to the Pilgrims.