Us History Timeline
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Time Line
1492 Christopher Columbus lands in the Bahamas.
1513 Ponce de Leon lands in Florida.
1518 Smallpox, brought by the Europeans, begins to decimate the native population of Central and South America. The epidemic will last until 1530.
1521 The surrender of Tenochtitlan to Spanish explorer/conqueror Ferdinand Cortes, and his empire falls.
1533 Henry VIII starts the English Reformation mainly to gain a divorce from Catherine of Aragon.
1539 Hernando de Soto begins exploration of what will be the southeastern United States.
1540 Francisco Vasquez de Coronado does the same in the southwest.
1558 Henry VIIIs daughter Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England.
1587 Sir Walter Raleigh starts, and fails, with a colony in Roanoke; the first attempt in North America.
1588 The English navy, helped by violent storms, defeats the Spanish Armada.
1603 James I becomes King of England.
Samuel de Champlain of France explores what will be present day Canada.
1607 Jamestown, Virginia is founded.
1611 The first Virginia tobacco crop is harvested.
1619 The first African-Americans arrive in Virginia.
1620 Plymouth Colony (Massachusetts) is founded.
1622 The Powhatan Confederacy attacks the Virginia Colony.
1624 The Dutch settle Manhattan Island.
1625 Charles I becomes King of England.
1630 The Massachusetts Bay Colony is founded.
1634 Maryland is founded as a “haven for English Catholics”
1635 Roger Williams is “expelled” from The Massachusetts Bay Colony, and founds Providence (Rhode Island).
1636 Connecticut is founded.
1637 1. The Pequot War virtually wipes out the Pequot Indian tribe.
2. Anne Marbury Hutchinson and her followers are exiled to Rhode Island, from Massachusetts Bay Colony, for preaching what the Puritan elite call heresy.
1642 The English Civil War sends many in search of the “New World.”
1646 Virginia and the Powhatan Confederacy sign a peace treaty.
1649 King Charles I is executed.
1660 1. The House of Stuart returns to the throne of England, and King Charles rules.
1662 The “Halfway Covenant” is drafter in Massachusetts:
a. Adults who had been baptized but were not fill church member could have their children baptized if they recognized Church authority and lived by its precepts.
b. They could not, however, vote or take communion.
1663 Carolina is charted
1664 England defeats the Dutch and takes over New Amsterdam, naming it New York.
1675 King Phillips War
a. Chief Metacomet of Pokanet tribe rises against Pilgrim encroachment of tribal lands
b. Destroys 12 of 90 Puritan towns.
c. Lack of food and ammunition brings about defeat.
d. Metacomet killed. Tribe virtually wiped out except in Marthas Vineyard area.
1676 Bacons Rebellion in Virginia.
a. Farmer Nathaniel Bacon rouses farmers to fight Indians.
b. Governor William Berkeley declares him “in rebellion.”
c. Bacon marches on Jamestown and burns capitol to the ground. When he dies of dysentery, the rebellion collapses.
1680 1. Pueblo Revolt
a. Led by Medicine Man Pope, Pueblos in New Mexico revolt against Spaniards and drive them out.
b. Spaniards out of power until 1692, when they engender new spirit of cooperation with the Indians.
2. Maryland colonists, “forced” to eat oysters along their shore to keep from starvation, found a new industry.
1681 Pennsylvania is chartered.
1682 James II is King of England.
1686 Dominion of New England is formed.
a. Charters of all individual states revoked due to “Non English” practices.
b. Sir Edmund Andros is named Governor of Dominion.
1688 James II is deposed in the “Glorious Revolution.”
William and Mary gain the throne.
1689 1. Dominion of New England is overthrown.
a. Andros jailed.
b. Return to former state charters hope for but not achieved
2. King Williams War
a. A.k.a. The War of the League of Augsburg.
b. Americans fight on Northern Frontiers.
c. Many colonies are decimated.
1690 John Locke writes an Essay Concerning Human Rights, a major contribution to the era known as “The Enlightenment.”
1691 The Massachusetts Colony gets a new charter giving it all North American Territories north to the St. Lawrence River.
1692 Salem Witchcraft hysteria
a. Brought on by tensions from King Williams War.
b. Started as a “prank” by a group of adolescent girls.
c. Nineteen people executed. Hundreds imprisoned.
1693 The College of William and Mary is founded in the Virginia Colony.