This is a work-in-progress timeline of (almost) every date mentioned in episodes of The History of the Americans Podcast, with links to the respective episode and, in a few cases, other sources.
The most detailed timeline of American history during the colonial era through the 1670s you will find anywhere!
Dates are as reported in the podcast. Generally, the months and days are Old Style (when relevant), but with the New Style year. The Old Style year changed on March 25, which is very confusing, so this is the convention followed in most history books.
Please suggest revisions, correction, additions, or links. To do so, use the contact page for this website.
Before 1492
The Americans Before Columbus Part 1
The Americans Before Columbus Part 2
Timeline of events before 1500
[Podcast events after 1600 follow below, until such time as I make separate pages for them.]
March 18, 1602 – The Viceroy of New Spain instructs Sebastian Vizcaino to explore the Pacific Coast of today’s United States. Vizcaino was to explore the coast from Cape San Lucas at the tip of Baja to Cape Mendocino, almost the northern edge of today’s state of California, a distance of more than 1400 miles as the super crow would fly, and considerably more by sail. He was not to go north of Cape Mendocino.
March 26, 1602 – Bartholomew Gosnold sets sail from Falmouth with twenty aspiring colonists and a dozen sailors on a small bark named the Concord, destination “northern Virginia,” which today we would call “New England.”
May 14, 1602 – Gosnold’s Concord makes landfall near today’s Portland, Maine. Gosnold had innovated a northerly route, north of the Azores, and made the crossing in 49 days. They encounter eight Indians in a Basque shallop with mast and sail, an iron grapple, and a kettle of copper, one of them dressed entirely in European clothes.
May and June, 1602 – Gosnold explores and names Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and the Elizabeth Islands, and spends a couple of weeks on the last. The settlers decide not to stay, however, and the Concord sails for England on June 18, 1602.
May 5, 1602 – Sebastián Vizcaíno’s expedition up the west coast departs Acapulco.
November 10, 1602 – Vizcaíno’s fleet reaches the border of today’s State of California with Mexico. On November 12, he finds a big harbor just to the north, and names it after his flagship, the San Diego.
November 24, 1602 – Vizcaíno sees Catalina Island, and he so names it because it is the day of the Feast of St. Catherine. They land and explore the island on November 27.
December 15, 1602 – Vizcaíno reaches Monterey Bay, which he names in honor of the Viceroy of New Spain.
January 12, 1603 – Vizcaíno reaches Cape Mendocino. Facing a storm and burdened with a disease-ridden crew, the fleet turns around and sails south with the wind now at their back.
March 15, 1603 – Samuel de Champlain and his uncle, Captain Francois Gravé, known as “Pont-Gravé” to his men and history, sail from France with three ships, arriving at the mouth of the St. Lawrence in mid-May, 1603. They bring two Montaignais Indians who had been in France the previous year, having been brought back by Pont-Gravé on an earlier visit to the St. Lawrence. They will act as interpreters.
March 21, 1603 – Vizcaíno makes it back to Acapulco.
March 24, 1603 – Elizabeth I dies. She was sixty nine years old and had reigned forty-five years and one hundred and twenty-seven days.
April 10, 1603 – Martin Pring, in command of Speedwell and Discoverer, sailed from Milford Haven in Wales to New England in search of sassafras. Sailing via the Azores, on the route pioneered for the English by Bartholomew Gosnold, the two ships reached the “northern coast of Virginia” at latitude 43 degrees, just south of today’s Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the first part of June. From there they sailed north to roughly the mouth of the Saco River on the coast of Maine, and then turned around and went south to 41.5 degrees, Martha’s Vineyard, where they stayed for more than a month. He brings two mastiffs, Fool and Gallant, who are the first two dogs in North America whose names come down to us.
May 26, 1603 – Champlain and Pont-Gravé drop anchor at Tadoussac harbor on the St. Lawrence, about 100 miles downriver from the future Quebec City. They take the Indian interpreters and have a first productive encounter with the local tribes up the Saguenay river.
June 18, 1603 – Champlain and Pont-Gravé sail farther up the St. Lawrence, reaching the site of Quebec City on June 22. After exploring the area, they continue up river to the fall line, a place Jacques Cartier had named “Mont Real” during his explorations of the first half of the 1500s.
August-September 1603 – Champlain and Pont-Gravé return to France.
October 1603 – Pring returns to England.
May 8, 1604 – Samuel de Champlain and Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons, arrive off the coast of Nova Scotia with two ships, 200 or so skilled men, and supplies for a year. Their goal is to establish a permanent settlement in Acadia.
Summer 1604 – After exploring the region by shallop, Champlain and the Sieur de Mons choose a five-acre defensible island in the St. Croix River for their settlement. At that point the St. Croix River is the border between the United States and Canada, and their island is about 1700 feet inside the United States. They plant crops and build houses, a church, and a government building around a central square. Champlain and Sieur de Mons sent all but 70 of the men home in the two ships in September.
August 28, 1604 – James I signs a treaty ending the long war with Spain.
September 2, 1604 – Champlain begins the first of several expeditions along the coast of Maine in a shallow-draft boat with perhaps a dozen men, including two Indians to help with translation. On September 5 they reach Mount Desert Island, Maine. After further exploration, they return to St. Croix Island on October 2, 1604.
March 31, 1605 – George Weymouth, in command of Archangel, departs for New England with the purpose of finding a suitable settlement for a Catholic colony. He arrives at the coast of Maine in mid-May.
June 4, 1605 – Weymouth captures five Maine Indians – Nahanada, Amoret, Skidwarres, Maneddo, and Assacomoit – and takes them back to England, arriving there July 18.
June 1605 – After enduring a brutal and deadly winter on St. Croix Island, Champlain and Sieur de Mons again explore the coast of Maine, then known as Norumbega. They explore the Kennebec River in early July.
July 10, 1605 – Champlain and Sieur de Mons reach Saco Bay, Maine.
July 11, 1605 – Champlain and Sieur de Mons sail the coast of today’s New Hampshire, and reach Cape Ann, today’s Rockport, Massachusetts. There they had modest success communicating by signs, and got the Indians to draw a map with charcoal of the coastline ahead. They described what would be the Charles River, and Boston’s Back Bay.
July 18, 1605 – Champlain and Sieur de Mons reach Patuxet, the future Plymouth, Massachusetts. On July 20 they sail around the tip of Cape Cod, and on July 21 they reach Nauset, Massachusetts. The Indians are hostile, and ambush sailors who went ashore to get fresh water. On July 25, they turn around and sail north, back to St. Croix River.
April 10, 1606 – James I signs the original Charter of the Virginia Company. It awards a patent for the southern part of “Virginia” to a group of investors from London, and the northern part – the mid-Atlantic states and New England – to a group of investors from Plymouth.
December 20, 1606 – The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery leave England bound for the Chesapeake. The Susan Constant, was, at 120 tons, only 116 feet long. Her captain was Christopher Newport, the most experienced man at sea in the group, and John Smith was on board. Bartholomew Gosnold commanded the 40-ton, 68 foot Godspeed. The Discovery, roughly 20 tons and fifty feet long, was captained by John Ratcliffe.
February 13, 1607 – King Philip III of Spain orders St. Augustine abandoned, the withdrawal of Spain from La Florida, and the relocation of converted Catholic Indians to Hispaniola. Word of the King’s order doesn’t reach St. Augustine until October 1607, by which time the Spanish know of the English settlement at Jamestown. They ask the Crown to reconsider its decision, and in the summer of 1608 Philip III rescinds the order.
April 26, 1607 – The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery spot land at Virginia Beach after an arduous and dissent-ridden crossing that had resulted in, among other things, John Smith being confined to the Susan Constant’s brig.
May 14, 1607 – After scouting the lower James River, the English settle on Pespahegh, a peninsula on the north bank of the James with deep water right up to the shore owned by a tribe of that same name. It was accessible by land only through a narrow neck, that seemed easily defend. They name the place James Fort.
May 18, 1607 – The local chief Wowinchopunck arrived with deer for feasting and with a hundred men armed with bows and arrows. A few of the nervous English had firearms at the ready. Wowinchopunck motioned for them to put down their weapons, which they refused to do. Then a Paspahegh warrior picked up an English hatchet, and a scuffle ensued over it. Wowinchopunck took his men and stormed off in anger.
May 21, 1607 – Captain Christopher Newport, John Smith, and a detachment of soldiers leave Jamestown to explore the region. It is on this trip that they first hear of a paramount chief in the region.
Late May, 1607 – While Newport and Smith were exploring the James, an alliance of five tribes – the Quiyoughcohannocks, the Weyanocks, the Appomattocs, the Paspaheghs, and the Kiskiacks attacked the settlement with at least two hundred soldiers, taking it entirely by surprise. The English pulled the guns from the crates and rallied to defend themselves. In James Horn’s account, “the Indians came right up to the camp and shot their arrows through the tents, wounding twelve of the English, two of whom later died.” The attack is repelled when the Indians retreat after seeing the Susan Constant‘s cannon take down a tree.
May 31, 1607 – Sir John Popham and Sir Ferdinando Gorges organized a colonizing expedition to Maine. It consisted of two ships – the Gift of God under the command of George Popham, and the Mary and John under Raleigh Gilbert. They carried around 100 colonists, including the last two of the five kidnapped Indians, Skidwarres and Amoret.
June 22, 1607 – Christopher Newport with the Susan Constant and the Godspeed return to England, leaving behind the Discovery and a shallop. With the departure of the sailors, who had done much of the manual work, class differences emerged among the colonists and they essentially stopped working.
August 6, 1607 – The colonists at James Fort start dying in droves. On August 22, the wise and humane Bartholomew Gosnold dies. Governor Edward-Maria Wingfield does not get sick, and John Smith accuses him over helping himself to too many rations.
August 16, 1607 – The Gift of God and the Mary and John reach the coast of Maine near the mouth of the Kennebec River. Within a few days they identify a location for the their settlement, on the coast about 12 miles southeast of today’s Brunswick. They name it Fort St. George. This becomes known as the “Popham” or “Sagadahoc” colony.
September 10, 1607 – John Smith builds an alliance on the Jamestown council to oust Wingfield and replace him with Ratcliffe.
November 9, 1607 – Ratcliffe dispatches Smith with a detachment in the Discovery and the shallop to explore the Chickahominy River and trade for food. It is the first of three such food-buying trips Smith will make.
Early December 1607 – On the third food-buying trip, John Smith and a small party are attacked by Indians, probably Pamunkeys. Smith meets Opechancanough in a fateful exchange. Opechancanough took Smith to Werowocomoco, and he meets Wahunsonacock, also known as Powhatan.
January 2, 1608 – John Smith returns to Jamestown with a contingent of twelve Powhatan men led by Rawhunt, one of Powhatan’s most trusted lieutenants, having established diplomatic relations with the paramount chief. On arriving, Smith learned that a group of the “gentlemen” have commandeered Discovery and were preparing to sail her to England. He orders his men to point a cannon at the ship and the mutineers to return to shore.
January 3-7, 1608 – Captain Newport returns with 100 settlers and new supplies. On January 7, one of the new arrivals lets a fire get out of control and it burns most of the settlement, including the storehouse with the new supplies.
January-February 1608 – Newport and Smith meet with Powhatan again, and swap two teenagers, Thomas Savage to live with Powhatan and Namontack to live with the English. Namontack would return to England with Newport in April.
February 5, 1608 – George Popham died, leaving Raleigh Gilbert in sole command of the Popham Colony.
April 10, 1608 – Captain Newport sails for England from Jamestown with Namontack, among others.
April 20, 1608 – Captain Francis Nelson in the Phoenix arrived at Jamestown with between forty and sixty new settlers and a lot of food.
April – June 1608 – Samuel de Champlain sails for the St. Lawrence again, arriving in June. He proceeds upriver to build a settlement which he calls Quebec, after the Indian name for the place.
June 2, 1608 – Captain Nelson and the Phoenix departed Jamestown for England arriving there not long after Newport. In addition to a load of cedar clapboard, Nelson carried something of immense value – a sketch map and a 13,000 word narrative diary that John Smith had handed him just before he embarked.
June – September 1608 – John Smith makes two separate expeditions to explore the Chesapeake, and opens up trading relations with the various tribes. Champlain learns that European demand for furs has already led to war between his Algonquian allies, including the Montaignais, and the Mohawks of the Iroquois in upstate New York.
July 5, 1608 – Raleigh Gilbert’s oldest brother, Sir John Gilbert died, leaving Raleigh the family estates. A final resupply ship would leave England in July bearing that news and arrive at the colony in September 1608. Raleigh Gilbert immediately determined that he had to go back to England to take over the family lands. With both leaders dead, no obvious successor, winter coming again, and financial support fading, the remaining colonists left with Gilbert in October, ending the story of the Popham Colony of the Virginia Company.
Late September 1608 – Captain Christopher Newport returns to Jamestown early than expected, bringing Namontack home. Newport also brought eight Germans and Poles – probably the first Poles ever to visit the New World – who were skilled in making glass, pitch, tar and potash.
Autumn 1608 – Newport and Smith visit Powhatan at Werawocomoco, and attempt to put a crown on his head in a “coronation.” Gifts are exchanged, and Newport makes promises to Powhatan, including to build him an English style house. German carpenters are sent to do the work.
January 12, 1609 – Smith visits Powhatan at Werawocomoco again. Powhatan feigns good-faith negotiations, but prepares an ambush. Pocahontas warns Smith of the ambush, and they stay on their guard and prevent the attack.
January 14, 1609 (est) – Smith and his company visit Opechancanough, who has also prepared an ambush. When Smith is warned by a fellow Englishman that they are surrounded by Indian soldiers, Smith grabs Opechancanough by a knot in his hair, puts a pistol to his chest, and negotiates safe passage.
Late January, 1609 – Having returned to Jamestown, Smith finds it in disorder and running out of food. He gives his famous order that only those who work will receive food, an affront to the “gentlemen.”
April 6, 1609 – Henry Hudson, sailing for the Dutch, leaves Amsterdam in his new ship, the Half Moon. Per his instructions, he sails toward Norway, looking for a northeast passage to Asia.
May 23, 1609 – A new charter for Virginia colony is issued in London, dissolving the council and replacing it with a single governor. The new governor would be Sir Thomas Gates, an experienced military man who had fought in the Netherlands and Ireland, and as a young man had served on Francis Drake’s mission to the West Indies in 1585-86, and been at Roanoke when Drake picked up Ralph Lane’s colony.
June 7, 1609 – Samuel de Champlain and Pont-Gravé develop a plan for a preemptive attack on the Mohawks. The point is not conquest, but to deter further Mohawk aggression.
June 28, 1609 – A force of Frenchmen and Algonquians sail the Iroquois River south toward New York with the goal of fighting Mohawks.
July 13, 1609 – Samuel Argall arrives in Jamestown, having chased off a Spanish ship probing at the mouth of the Chesapeake. Argall tells Smith that he will be relieved of command and replaced by Sir Thomas Gates when the Sea Venture arrives with new orders.
July 14, 1609 – Champlain and his allies enter Lake Champlain from the north. They are almost certainly the first Europeans to see it.
July 18, 1609 – Henry Hudson and the Half Moon, having abandoned the search for a northeast passage and turned toward North America, arrive off Nova Scotia.
July 24, 1609 – A hurricane strikes “the third supply” to Jamestown, and the Sea Venture is believed lost. Instead, it is shipwrecked on Bermuda.
July 29 – 30, 1609 – Champlain, two other Frenchmen, and his Algonquians allies encounter Mohawks in canoes on the water near Ticonderoga. They agree to fight early on the morning of July 30. The result is a shocking victory for Champlain and the Algonquians.
August 11, 1609 – The first ships of the “third supply” arrive in Jamestown. Sir Thomas Gates and the orders to replace John Smith, however, were on the Sea Venture, which had been lost in a storm. Unbeknownst to the settlers at Jamestown, it had been shipwrecked on Bermuda. Without orders, Smith refuses to step down until the end of his term on September 10.
August 28, 1609 – After having sailed the Atlantic Coast of North America south all the way to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Hudson turns the Half Moon around, and reaches Delaware Bay on August 28.
September 2, 1609 – The Half Moon reaches Sandy Hook. On September 4 Hudson and his men go ashore, and have their first encounter with Indians of New Jersey.
September 6, 1609 – The Half Moon sails into lower New York Harbor. Hudson sends out men in a ship’s boat to explore, and they are attacked by 26 Indians in two canoes. Englishman John Coleman dies from an arrow through the throat. Hudson would stay in the area until around September 10, both trading with and having hostile encounters with different Indian groups.
September 14, 1609 – Having sailed up the North/Hudson River, the Half Moon reaches West Point.
September 18, 1609 – The Half Moon nears the future site of Albany. On September 20, the ship’s carpenter goes ashore to cut a tree for a new spar, and encounters friendly Indians (probably people subsequently known as the Esopus). They come aboard and find out they rather enjoy beer.
September 22, 1609 – Hudson sends the ship’s boat to explore north. It reaches the mouth of the Mohawk River, at which point it returns to the Half Moon. On September 23, the Half Moon sails back down the North/Hudson River.
October 1, 1609 – The Half Moon reaches Stony Point, and a trading misunderstanding leads to conflict with local Indians.
October 2, 1609 – The Half Moon‘s crew learns that the big island on the east bank of the lower North/Hudson River is called Manna-hata. The Half Moon sails for England on October 4.
October 4, 1609 – John Smith, having been terribly burned in an accident (or perhaps an attempted murder) when his powder horn caught fire in early September, returns to England. He would live more than 20 more years, but would never come back to Virginia again.
Winter 1609-1610 (in New Mexico) – Almost twelve years after crossing the Rio Grande, Don Juan de Onate y Salazar establishes the capital of New Mexico at Santa Fe. The traditional founding of the city is 1610, but there is no documented founding moment.
Winter 1609-1610 (in Virginia) – The “starving time” at Jamestown. Powhatan launches the First Anglo-Powhatan War shortly after John Smith’s departure, focusing on cutting off the food supply to Jamestown. By March 1610, after a winter of great suffering and even cannibalism, only 60 of the ~500 settlers who had been there at Smith’s departure survived.
April 1, 1610 – Thomas West, Lord de la Warr, leads the “fourth supply” from England to Jamestown. He has been appointed governor, Sir Thomas Gates – shipwrecked in Bermuda – having been given up for dead.
June 7, 1610 – Sir Thomas Gates, now in Jamestown after having spent most of a year in Bermuda, deems the colony untenable and orders its abandonment. Sailing down the James River on June 8, they encounter lead boats from de la Warr’s fleet and turn around. Jamestown is recovered on June 10, having been abandoned for three days.
June 19, 1610 – The Council of Virginia sends Samuel Argall and George Somers in two small ships to Bermuda to retrieve hogs and other supplies that had been left there by the Sea Venture castaways. Along the way the two ships were separated, and at least Argall’s Discovery was swept up in the Gulf Stream to the north. Argall fished the Cape Cod shoals, sailed at least as far north as Penobscot Bay, sailed down the coast, named Point Delaware – after Lord De La Warr – and returned to Jamestown with his load of fish, most of which he donated.
July 9, 1610 – Reinforced by the soldiers in de la Warr’s fleet, Sir Thomas Gates initiated the English counteroffensive when his forces suddenly, and without provocation, descended upon the Kecoughtan village near Fort Algernon. His musketeers killed some twenty men, women, and children, easily inflicting “extraordinary large and mortal wounds” on a high percentage of the population because the unsuspecting Kecoughtans had been lured into the open by the tunes and dancing of Gates’ drummer – a traditional Powhatan gesture of hospitality.
March 28, 1611 – After having survived a long winter with a detachment of men up the James River under constant siege from the locals, Thomas West, Lord de la Warr, sails for England on Samuel Argall’s ship, never to return to Virginia. Testing the leadership change, the Powhatan Confederacy immediately attacks Jamestown.
May 12, 1611 – Sir Thomas Dale arrived in Virginia with three ships, a great store of armor, munitions, food, and three hundred more veteran soldiers who had been tempered in brutal fighting in Ireland and the Netherlands. Dale and his men were very experienced, hardened soldiers, and were the first English fighters in North America to bring comprehensive steel armor. Dale himself was a very tough customer.
Early August 1611 – Sir Thomas Gates came back to Virginia with six more ships and another 250 soldiers, giving the English overwhelming military advantage. They build fortifications along the James River, and the Powhatans and their allies retreat to Pamunkey country. The war would continued for more than two years, but there would be very little fighting.
October 30, 1611 – Gustavus Adolphus ascended to the throne of Sweden at age 16. He would turn Sweden into a Great Power, and eventually cast his eyes to the New World, leading to Swedish settlement on the Delaware River.
September 12, 1612 – Samuel Argall returns to Jamestown, and trades with Chesapeake tribes further to the north, developing the relationships that would be useful in capturing Pocahontas.
April 11, 1613 – Samuel Argall captures Pocahontas by means of a ruse while she is visiting an allied tribe on the Potomac. He dispatches a runner to notify Powhatan and takes her back to Jamestown on April 13. Sir Thomas Dale, the deputy governor in Virginia, sends Pocahontas up river to the fort at Henrico, where she learns to read English. John Rolfe meets her for the first time there.
June 1613 – Argall in his ship Treasurer sails up the eastern seaboard looking for a French settlement along the coast of Maine. On the way he forces a Dutch merchant in New York harbor to submit to the English flag. On the same voyage, he bloodlessly rousts a small French base on Mt. Desert Island, Maine.
Spring 1614 – Sir Thomas Dale, governor of Virginia, allows some small freeholders to own their own land and keep their crops, a first departure from collective farming at Jamestown. By the end of the year, ninety small private farms were harvesting crops. Richard Hamor reported that three men were now as productive as 30 before. While an exaggeration, allowing private farms greatly increased food security in the colony.
April 5, 1614 – John Rolfe and Pocahontas get married, effectively settling the First Anglo-Powhatan War. Pocahontas is christened, and given the English name Rebecca.
April 1614 – John Smith and Thomas Hunt arrive at Saco Bay, Maine to explore Norumbega, the area that Smith would soon name “New England.” He and Hunt would separate. Smith would sail on a small bark southward along the coast more than 250 miles, to the southern end of Cape Cod. He documented large populations of Indians all along the coast, and identified Patuxet, where the Mayflower Pilgrims would eventually settle.
Summer 1614 – Thomas Hunt captures 27 Indians from Cape Code and Patuxet, and sails for Malaga, Spain to sell them as slaves. One of those captured Indians is named Tisquantum, who apparently already knows some English, probably learned from fisherman. He is rescued by Spanish priests, and goes to live in a monastery. In 1616, an Englishman named John Slany would hear that the Spanish had an Anglophone Indian, and would negotiate for Tisquantum, who would come to live in Slany’s household in London for more than a year.
January 30, 1615 – Pocahontas/Matoaka/Rebecca gives birth to a son, Thomas Rolfe.
April 24, 1615 – Samuel de Champlain and Pont-Gravé, returning to New France after several years, sailed from France for the St. Lawrence River. After a fast crossing, they reach Tadoussac on May 25. They assemble modular shallops, and reach Quebec on June 2, 1615. He learns that his Huron and Algonquian allies want help in contending with the western Iroquois.
July 4, 1615 – Champlain begins a long journey of more than 500 miles through eastern Ontario and western New York, rounding up Indian allies for an attack on Onondaga, the fortified town roughly at the site of Syracuse, New York.
August 17, 1615 – Champlain reached Cahiague, a town of three to six thousand people – Champlain says 6,000, but modern archeologists estimate 3,000 people — protected by a massive palisade, just west of today’s Orillia, Ontario, on the shore of Lake Simcoe. The chief of the region was overjoyed to see Champlain. It was quickly agreed that warriors would be assembled for an attack at the heart of the land of the Iroquois. Between four and five hundred warriors materialized, and Champlain had perhaps a dozen arquebusiers. The multinational army departed September 1 on a 40-day journey to Onondaga.
October 9-10, 1615 – Champlain and his Indian allies approach Onondaga, which is heavily fortified. They attack, and are repulsed. Champlain himself is wounded and has to be carried forty miles back to water transport. The attack is a tactical failure, but the Onondaga refrain from attacking Champlain’s allies for 20 years, suggesting they had been deterred.
April 1616 – John Rolfe, Pocahontas, and their son Thomas sail for London on Samuel Argall’s ship Treasurer. In addition to the Rolfes, Powhatan’s son-in-law, Uttamatomakin, came along at the paramount chief’s behest to learn what he could of the English. There were at least six and probably eight or nine other Indians on board, a mix of nobles and servants, one of whom was to serve as Uttamatomakin’s interpreter.
March 17, 1617 – Pocahontas dies at Gravesend, after a visit to London.
1617 – John Slany sends Tisquantum to Newfoundland to translate for traders, but his dialect of Algonquian is too removed from the Indians in the region to be understandable. Tisquantum returns to London.
November 18, 1618 – The Virginia Company adopted a new charter. Known as the “Great Charter,” it did three important things. First, it lifted the martial law that had prevailed since the darkest moments of the first Powhatan War in 1610. It also authorized a general assembly, in which English men of property would have some capacity for self-governance. Finally, the Great Charter provided for the widespread private ownership of land by Englishmen in Virginia by making grants to men who went there to settle and plant a farm.
January 29, 1619 – Sir George Yeardley, the next governor of Virginia, sails from England with the Great Charter.
Spring 1619 – Sir Ferdinando Gorges sends Tisquantum and Thomas Dermer, an English captain, down the coast of New England. They learn that the indigenous population on the coast south of Maine has been destroyed by an epidemic. Dermer leaves Tisquantum on Martha’s Vineyard, to connect with Epanow, another Indian from the region who had spent several years in London.
June 30, 1619 – The first General Assembly of Virginia convenes. It is the first gathering of a (sort of) elected representative body of Europeans in North America. The secretary of the meeting was John Pory, who would later lead an early expedition into North Carolina.
Late August 1619 – John Rolfe writes a letter to Sir Edwin Sandys, the treasurer of the Virginia Company. Rolfe reports: “About the latter end of August, a Dutch man of War of the burden of 160 tons arrived at Point Comfort, the Commander’s name Captain Jope, his Pilot for the West Indies one Mr. Marmaduke, an Englishman. They met with the Treasurer in the West Indies, and determined to hold consort ship hitherward, but in their passage lost one the other. He brought not anything but 20 and odd Negroes, which the Governor and Cape Merchant bought for victuals (whereof he was in great need as he pretended) at the best and easiest rates they could.”
September 6, 1620 – The Mayflower, after two aborted attempts, finally sets sail from Plymouth, England, intended destination New York harbor.
November 3, 1620 – Sir Ferdinando Gorges establishes the Council for New England, which would eventually legitimize the Pilgrim settlement at New Plymouth.
November 9, 1620 – The Mayflower spots land. It is the coast of Cape Cod. They spend the next two days picking their way south, hoping to reach New York, but they turn around when confronted with the very treacherous waters near Martha’s Vineyard.
November 11, 1620 – The Mayflower, carrying “Separatist” Puritans, makes landfall at Provincetown, at the end of Cape Cod. Before going ashore, most of the men on board sign the Mayflower Compact, which provides that they will “covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and, by virtue hereof, to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most convenient for the general good of the colony.”
November 13, 1620 – The women of the Mayflower go ashore to do laundry. The day of the week was Monday, and for generations to come Mondays would be “wash day” in New England.
November 15, 1620 – Sixteen armed men of Mayflower, including Miles Standish, William Bradford, and Stephen Hopkins, row ashore in the ship’s boat. The water is so shallow that they have to get out and wade. They begin to explore, and spot a few Indians and a dog. The Pilgrims pursue, hoping to make contact. On November 16 they discover “Pilgrim Spring,” marked today in Nauset. On November 17 they find a store of Indian corn, and return to the ship on November 18.
November 28, 1620 – The ship’s modular shallop having been assembled, a second expedition from Mayflower explores the region.
November 30, 1620 – Peregrine White is born to William and Susanna White. He is the first child known to be born to English parents in New England, and would live almost 85 years, dying July 20, 1704.
December 7, 1620 – While William Bradford is with others in the shallop exploring, Dorothy Bradford falls off Mayflower and drowns. Some historians speculate she committed suicide because of depression.
December 11, 1620 – The Mayflower men in the shallop explore the harbor at Patuxet/New Plymouth and take soundings. They conclude that it would be a good place to settle, even though they had no authorization from England to do so.
December 23, 1620 – Mayflower has crossed from Provincetown to Plymouth. After two days waiting out bad weather, men go ashore and start cutting trees to make houses. The first house was framed by the end of December 25. The ensuing winter was rough, and during the course of it more than half the original passengers would die.
February 16, 1621 – A Pilgrim man hunting from a duck blind sees a band of Indians pass nearby. They do not see him. On February 17, a meeting was called to discuss defenses, and a small militia is established under Myles Standish.
March 16, 1621 – An Indian named Samoset marches through the front gate of the settlement and announces “Welcome Englishmen”! He turns out to be an Abenaki sachem visiting from Maine. Samoset explained in his rudimentary English that the name of this place was Patuxet, that almost everyone who had lived there had died of a plague in the last few years, and that the supreme leader of the region was Massasoit, who lived at a place called Pocanoket about forty miles to the south. He told them that the Nauset, the people on Cape Cod who had attacked them during the famous “First Encounter,” were hostile to the English because of Thomas Hunt’s perfidy back in 1614. He also reported that there was another Indian back in Pokanoket named Squanto, who spoke better English than he did. Samoset spent the night with Stephen Hopkins and his family – perhaps Hopkins volunteered because his Jamestown experience made him more comfortable than the other Pilgrims – and Samoset departed the next morning, promising to return in a few days with some of Massasoit’s men.
March 22, 1621 – Samoset returns to New Plymouth with Squanto and three other Indians. They report that Massasoit is near by. Soon that day, Massasoit appears with sixty warriors. With Samoset and Squanto translating, the Pilgrims and Massasoit hammer out a peace treaty that would survive largely without breach for more than 50 years. The next day, Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to hunt for eels under the mud in nearby streams.
July 2, 1621 – William Bradford, Edward Winslow, and Stephen Hopkins set out to walk the forty or so miles to Pokanoket, the seat of Massasoit’s government. Their mission is to deliver the grand sachem a red English coat and a copper chain, which he is to give to his messengers to confirm their legitimacy.
August 14, 1621 – Myles Standish and one of Massasoit’s men, Hobbamock, attack the wetu of Corbitant, a Narragansett sachem who was conspiring to break up the alliance between the Wampanoags and the English. It was the first military intervention by the Pilgrims in inter-Indian affairs. Although Corbitant was not at home, the attack was a success in the sense that in the weeks that followed the local sachems came to Plymouth and swore allegiance to King James.
Fall 1621 – The “first Thanksgiving”! A more nuanced examination here. The moment was, at a minimum, a reflection of the trust that had been established between the Pilgrims and the local Indians.
Late November 1621 – The Fortune arrives at Plymouth with 35 new settlers, only a few of which were Separatists. Among the passengers on the Fortune was a sixteen year-old young man named Philip de la Noye, whose French name was eventually spelled Delano and whose descendants included Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
December 1, 1621 – Parliament sends James I a list of fourteen grievances, all concerning Catholics. It demanded the enforcement of the laws of conformity against Catholics and further that Prince Charles, the King’s son, “be happily married to one of our own religion,” a slap at James’s flirtations with Spain. In the resulting confrontation, James would arrest Sir Edward Coke and send him to the Tower. This would be the first assertion of Parliament’s prerogative against the Crown, initiating a crisis that would result in the Puritan Great Migration to New England seven years later and the English Civil Wars 25 years later.
Late 1621 – early 1622 – Tisquantum travels around the region claiming to have influence on the English at Plymouth, while conspiring to garner support for his own elevation at Massasoit’s expense. Naturally, word gets back to Massasoit.
Spring 1622 – The Pilgrims hear that the Narragansetts may attack them. Myles Standish drills a small “trained band,” and the settlers build a palisade of more than a thousand pales to fortify the town.
Mid-March 1622 – John Pory, the secretary of state for Virginia, traveled some sixty miles south of the James into North Carolina and explored the Chowan River. Pory is the first known Englishman to visit North Carolina since John White investigated the aftermath of the “Lost” Colony of Roanoke in 1590.
March 22, 1622 – Opechancanough launches a surprise attack, the opening battle in the Second Anglo-Powhatan War. Hundreds of English die on the first day.
May 1622 – Thomas Weston, the primary financier of the Pilgrims, sends another sixty settlers to Plymouth for the Pilgrims to feed. None of them are religious Separatists. At about the same time, the Pilgrims learn of Opechancanough’s attack from a cod fisherman.
June – November 1622 – The English in Virginia regrouped into fortified settlements after Opechancanough’s surprise attack, and then counterattacked against the tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy.
September 5, 1622 – The Great Storm of that year strikes the Florida Keys and the Atlantic off of Florida, destroying shipping from Key West to Bermuda.
Fall 1622 – The 60 new settlers at Plymouth move to Wessagussett, in close proximity – too close – to the Massachusett nation. They promptly failed to feed themselves.
November 30, 1622 – Tisquantum dies of a sudden illness while with Bradford and others on a trading mission to Cape Cod, in the vicinity of Chatham, Massachusetts. Some historians speculate that he may have been poisoned at the direction of Massasoit for having conspired against the sachem.
1623 (date unknown) – The Jemez Revolt. Indians at the Pueblo near Albuquerque rise up and destroy the Spanish mission at Giusewa. They destroy a church capable of holding 2000 worshipers, burning it to the ground.
March 1623 – Edward Winslow treats Massasoit, who has fallen extremely ill, and seemingly saves his life. The treatment involves, among other things, chicken soup. A grateful Massasoit warns Winslow of a plot by the Massachusetts to attack the English at Wessagussett and then Plymouth.
March 23, 1623 – William Bradford convenes a public meeting to discuss the threat from the Massachusetts. Upon the advice of Myles Standish, and by now knowing the impact of Opechancanough’s attack in Virginia the year before, they decide on a pre-emptive strike at Wessagussett.
May 22, 1623 – Opechancanough has offered peace to the Virginians, and proposes to release captives. The English agree to meet and feign a deal, which they seal with a cask of poisoned wine. More than 200 Indians die in the trap, but Opechancanough escapes. He may have been injured, because the English did not see him again for seven years. The Second Anglo-Powhatan War would continue at low intensity until 1632.
Summer 1623 – Plymouth gives up collective farming and gives families private lands in proportion to their size. Food production soared once families were able to keep the output of their own private plots. This is in spite of a severe drought from mid-May to mid-July, a dry-spell worse than any time in Plymouth during the entire 20th century. The drought ended immediately after the Pilgrims had a day of fasting to pray for rain.
August 14, 1623 – William Bradford marries Alice Southworth. There to commemorate the governor’s nuptials was Massasoit, with a black wolf skin draped over his shoulder and, for propriety’s sake, with just one of his five wives by his side. He brought along 120 soldiers, who “danced with such a noise that you would wonder.”
January 1624 – The first permanent settlers in New Netherland leave the mother country on a small ship named Eendracht commanded by Adriaen Jorisz Thienpont. It is believed these colonists were divided over four locations: the mouth of the Fresh River (probably Kievits Hoeck (now Old Saybrook, Connecticut) on the western bank), Fort Wilhemus on the Hooghe eylant (now Burlington Island, between Philadelphia and Trenton) on the South River, Nooten Eylandt (now Governor’s Island) near Manhattan, and the upper reaches of the North River, where Fort Orange was founded (near today’s Albany.) The reason for the dispersion of the colonists was to lay claim to the whole area.
March 1624 – Thomas Morton was on his way to New England on a ship called Unity under the command of Captain Richard Wollaston and another adventurer, Humphrey Rastall. In New England by the summer, they established a colony at the site of today’s Quincy, Massachusetts, which they named Mount Wollaston.
May 24, 1624 – James I of England revokes the Charter of the Virginia Company and establishes a Crown or “royal” colony in its place. Virginia thereby becomes the first royal colony, which would become the most common type by the American revolution.
March 27, 1625 – James I dies, and his son, now Charles I, becomes King of England. There would be consequences.
November 5, 1626 – The date of the first documentary evidence that Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan Island for the Dutch West India Company from a band of the Leni Lenape tribe, probably in mid-May 1626.
October 1627 – Isaack de Rasieres, secretary of New Netherland, visits Plymouth and persuades them to start using wampum as a currency. The monetization of wampum among Europeans in the northeast would transform the geopolitics of the region.
Spring 1628 – George Calvert, the first Baron Baltimore, brings forty settlers to his new Avalon colony in Newfoundland. The winter is brutal, and by the following summer he pulls the plug.
June 1628 – Thomas Morton having renamed Mount Wollaston “Merrymount,” set up a maypole, and encouraged no end of debauchery (as well as having sold the Indians guns), the Pilgrims dispatch Myles Standish and a few soldiers to arrest him. This they do, and send him to England for prosecution.
July 1628 – Charles I appoints William Laud to the post of Bishop of London. Laud begins cracking down on “non-conforming” Puritans.
September 6, 1628 – John Endecott, leader of the vanguard of the Puritan Great Migration, arrives at Merrymount and cuts down the maypole Thomas Morton had erected there.
January 13, 1629 – Plymouth colony gets an exclusive right called “Warwick Patent” or “Kennebec Patent ” for the trading post Cushnoc (now Augusta, Maine) that they had founded the previous year on the banks of the Kennebec River.
February 11, 1629 – A Puritan fleet of six ships and 350 settlers, including as many as 180 indentured servants, departs the Isle of Wight for Salem, Massachusetts. It arrives in June.
March 4, 1629 – The Massachusetts Bay Company receives its charter from Charles I.
March 10, 1629 – Charles I dissolves Parliament, which was heavily Puritan, and would not call another until 1640. The dissolution of Parliament and resulting crackdown accelerates Puritan emigration to New England and elsewhere. Roger Williams was, at the time, working for Parliament as a messenger among the members. The dissolution would influence his thinking for the rest of his life.
June 2, 1629 – Charles I gives the Earle of Carlisle a proprietary charter for the Caribbean islands, particularly Barbados. It would become the precedent for subsequent proprietary colonies in North America.
August 19, 1629 – George Calvert sends a letter to Charles I requesting a grant of land for his new colony in “Virginia,” where the weather is a lot nicer than Newfoundland.
October 30, 1629 – Charles I grants a proprietary colony for the land south of Virginia to Sir Robert Heath. The Heath proprietary – named Carolana in honor of Charles – covered the territory between 31 and 36 degrees, which extends from just north of Florida in today’s Georgia to the southern bank of Albemarle Sound. Various attempts to settle the Heath proprietary fail before they get to North Carolina.
Late 1629 – Thomas Morton returns to Merrymount after having avoided prosecution in England.
April 8, 1630 – The flagship of the “Winthrop fleet,” the Arbella, and several consorts sails from Yarmouth, Isle of Wight. She would arrive at Salem on June 13, 1630, with other ships following along.
June 17, 1630 – John Winthrop begins exploring the rivers and bays around Boston. He meets Samuel Maverick, who had been living with his wife in a palisaded house on the site of Logan Airport since 1624. On the same trip, Winthrop decided that his people should build their settlement at the site of Charlestown.
July 12, 1630 – Michael Pauw, an important merchant of Amsterdam and a director of the Dutch West India Company, armed with a patent from the WIC, purchases land from local Indians on the west bank of the Hudson River across from Manhattan. Pauw makes a second purchase on November 22, 1630. The territory extends from Bayonne, New Jersey, north to roughly the Bergen County line. Pauw names the territory, which is the first known purchase of land in today’s New Jersey, “Pavonia.”
August 1630 – John Winthrop orders that Thomas Morton be arrested on the (probably trumped up) charge of stealing an Indian’s canoe. He is convicted, banished, and sent back to England. Once again, the charges against him would be dismissed in England. Morton thus became the first person banished by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but he would not be the last.
October 1630 – The Winthrop Puritans determine that there is inadequate fresh water at Charlestown, so some of them decide to remove to the peninsula they would soon name Boston. The problem is, another “straggler” recluse, William Blackstone, has his farm there. Winthrop buys it from him, and Blackstone moves to the northern part of today’s Rhode Island, where he would live for another 40 years. Blackstone’s Boston farm becomes the town Common.
December 6, 1630 – Governor Winthrop and his “assistants” meet and decide to fortify the neck of the Shawmut peninsula (Boston).
December 12, 1630 – A ship with some 28 settlers set sail from Holland under the leadership of David Pieterszoon de Vries, with the goal of establishing a colony on the Delaware River. They would land at Lewes, Delaware and give it the old college try, but at some point in the next two years would be wiped out by local Indians.
February 6, 1631 – The Lyon, a ship of the Winthrop Fleet that had sailed back to England in September 1630, arrives back in Massachusetts Bay with new passengers, the most consequential being Roger Williams.
April 12, 1631 – Roger Williams has been offered the job of “teacher” at the Boston church, but finding it insufficiently pure he turns down the honor and moves to Salem, where John Endecott offers him the job of minister at the church there. On April 12, the now quite annoyed Winthrop and his Court of Assistants write to Endecott suggesting he withdraw the offer to Williams. Endecott does, and by August 1631 Williams and his wife Mary move to Plymouth and live under the protection of William Bradford and Edward Winslow.
August 17, 1631 – William Claiborne of the Virginia Colony purchases Kent Island in the northern Chesapeake from local Indians. He establishes a settlement and a trading post. His authority for doing so is an ambiguous patent for trading in the region, but not settlement per se.
November 4, 1631 – The Lyon returns again from England, this time bringing John Winthrop’s wife and children. The harvest is in, and they have a big feast to celebrate.
April 15, 1632 – George Calvert, the first Baron Baltimore, dies before the Maryland Charter can “pass the seals.”
June 20, 1632 – The Charter of Maryland is granted the George Calvert’s eldest son, Cecil, the Second Lord Baltimore.
March 4, 1633 – Boston’s first pub opens.
June 1633 – The Dutch build Fort Good Hope on the Connecticut (Fresh) River at the site of today’s Hartford.
September 1633 – The Pilgrims of Plymouth build their own trading post on the Connecticut River, just north of Hartford. Because it was upriver, this put them in the lead position to buy furs coming down the river from the north. It is the first of three settlements that the English would build on the river in the next three years.
November 22, 1633 – The Ark and the Dove, the ships that would carry the founding settlers of the Maryland Proprietary, leave the Isle of Wight for the Chesapeake. They would take the southern route and be separated by a storm. Ark reached Barbados on January 3, 1634, and Dove caught up within three weeks.
Late 1633 – Roger Williams and his growing family have been in Plymouth for more than two years. He has many friends, but stokes controversy by asserting in a treatise (lost to history) that Indians developed their land in the English sense and therefore owned it, and that the English could only acquire land from Indians in honest arms-length purchases. This amounts to accusing Charles I of having lied in his official pronouncements, which is too much for Plymouth. In late 1633, Williams asks for permission to withdraw from the Plymouth church, and returns to Salem. He assumes the informal role of “teacher” at the Salem church, and keeps a low profile.
January 24, 1634 – Ark and Dove, carrying the first settlers for the Maryland Proprietary, leave Barbados together, and reach Point Comfort, at the mouth of the Chesapeake, on February 27, 1634.
Winter 1633 -34 – An epidemic, probably smallpox, sweeps through the Indians of the Connecticut River valley. It is estimated that the population of the powerful Pequot tribe declined from 16,000 to 3,000.
March 3, 1634 – After a brief stop in Virginia, Ark and Dove sail up the Chesapeake, and reach the mouth of the Potomac River on March 5.
August 2, 1634 – Samuel Skelton, the minister at the Salem church and the man to whom Roger Williams deferred, dies. Williams becomes actual and spiritual leader of the Salem church, and can no longer avoid theological controversies. Soon thereafter, the General Court of Massachusetts declared a public day of fasting and “humiliation.” Williams objected, identifying eleven public sins for which “it pleased God to inflict and further threaten public calamities.” They included his objection to the government enforcement of the first four of the Ten Commandments, because that amounted to state contamination of a worshiper’s personal relationship with God and the covenant of grace. He objected to government-compelled church attendance and the loyalty oaths on the same grounds. Finally, he made public his heretofore private argument that the King had no right to grant the lands used by the Indians. Williams was effectively arguing that only wholesale reform of the church and government of Massachusetts could prevent the wrath of God. The General Court did not take this well.
August 1634 – Will Hutchinson and his wife Anne and their children arrive in Boston.
Late August 1634 – Jean Nicolet, a young Frenchman under orders from Samuel de Champlain, engages Ottawa Indians to guide him from the eastern end of Lake Huron to the vicinity of Green Bay, Wisconsin. His purpose is to negotiate peace and trading relations with tribes in the region who have been harassing Hurons and Ottawas, allies of the French against the Iroquois, from the west.
Mid-September 1634 – Jean Nicolet and his Indian guides reach the northern shore of Green Bay at roughly the border between Michigan and Wisconsin. After some grand gestures – donning a silk French diplomatic robe and firing pistols into the air – the tribes of the region throw a huge feast for Nicolet. He negotiates trading relations with the tribes along Green Bay, including Door County, Wisconsin.
November 27, 1634 – The General Court of Massachusetts Bay meets to consider, among other things, a response to Roger Williams and attack on Boston church practices. It does not yet expel him, but dispatches clergy to persuade him of the error of his ways.
December 12, 1634 – Two Pequot sachems arrived at Boston, bearing furs and wampum. They asked the Puritan magistrates to use some of the wampum to broker an end to the Pequot-Narragansett conflict. The Boston authorities and the Pequot envoys negotiated a trade agreement, but the English would not agree to even a defensive military alliance. Though the treaty has not survived it was written down, the Pequot sachems making their mark by drawing a bow and arrow with a hand. The envoys asked the English to send a pinnace with cloth to trade, and offered them big land concessions in the Connecticut River valley. Weakened as they were, they thought that more English in the valley would help maintain the peace.
April 5, 1635 – Two ships owned by the Calvert family, the proprietors of Maryland Colony, seized the Longtail, a pinnace that belonged to William Claiborne of Kent Island, whom the Calverts had been trying to evict. Claiborne begins arming his ships.
April 23, 1635 – The Boston Latin School is founded. It is the oldest still-operating school in today’s United States.
April 23, 1635 – William Claiborne’s armed sloop Cockatrice confronts the St. Helen and the St. Margaret sailing out of St. Mary’s City, Maryland. Shots are fired. One Marylander dies, as does Claiborne’s captain and one other crewman. The Cockatrice surrenders to the Calvert ships.
July 8, 1635 – The General Court again demanded that Roger Williams appear to account for himself, this time to answer specific charges. He engaged them in theological debate, and rallied the clergy outside of Boston to his arguments. By going public with the dispute throughout the Colony, Williams enraged the Court.
1635-1636 – Anne Hutchinson holds after-church theological discussion groups at her house with the women in her congregation to study John Cotton’s sermons. By the summer of 1636, even men are coming to her discussions, including Sir Henry Vane, now the governor of Massachusetts Bay. Word gets out that she is critical of preachers she regards as teaching a “covenant of works.”
August 14, 1635 – The great New England hurricane of 1635 smashes into the region. It is believed to be the worst such storm until 1938, when a Cat 5 hurricane hit New England. William Bradford’s description of the storm is at the link.
September 1635 – William Pynchon and some of his men visit Agawam, on the upper Connecticut River at the site of today’s Springfield, Massachusetts, and buy land from a local tribe. The transaction is eventually memorialized in a deed dated July 15, 1636. Pynchon returns to the Bay for the winter, but leaves men behind to build a house. He returns with settlers in 1636, and founds Springfield.
September 3, 1635 – The General Court of the Bay met again, this time bringing charges against the allies of Roger Williams, who one by one recanted under the threat of imprisonment or expulsion. Amazingly enough, even now the Court gave Williams the opportunity to recant, and offered him “further conference or disputation” with learned clergy who could, presumably, show him his error. Williams declined. Still hoping to avoid sentencing Williams – perhaps a measure of his personal appeal and popularity – the court offered to delay the proceedings for another month. Williams again declined.
October 9, 1635 – Out of moves, the General Court pronounced its sentence upon Roger Williams: That “the said Mr. Williams shall depart out of this jurisdiction within six weeks.”
Late 1635 – Roger Williams falls ill, and his friends obtain permission from the General Court to remain in Salem through the winter on the condition that he no longer spread his dissenting opinions. Williams cannot help himself, so in December the Court orders him arrested and sent back to England.
Early January 1636 – Secretly warned by John Winthrop that soldiers were coming to deport him, Roger Williams flees into the woods alone and finds refuge among his Indian friends. For the next fourteen weeks, until late March 1636, Williams moves from one Wampanoag village to another, finally arriving at today’s Rumford, Rhode Island. A few families who still believed in Williams follow him there, and they start a small settlement, just inside the claimed territory (via their alliance with the Wampanoags) of Plymouth Colony.
Spring 1636 – Lion Gardener builds Fort Saybrook at the mouth of the Connecticut River. Parts of the building would last for 300 years, until all traces of it were destroyed to make way for a Works Progress Administration project during the New Deal. More importantly, it put the English in close proximity with the Dutch, the Pequots, the Niantics, and the Narragansetts, and that would destabilize the region.
June 1636 – Peter Minuit, late of New Netherland, submits his proposal to establish a colony called New Sweden on the Delaware River between New Netherland and Maryland Colony.
July 20, 1636 – John Gallop discovers the murder of John Oldham by Block Island Indians, his “head cleft to the brains.” Through a series of poor decisions and misinformation, Oldham’s murder becomes one of the pretexts for the Pequot War.
Summer 1636 – The Bay Colony, which still regards Roger Williams as a fugitive, pressures Plymouth into evicting him. This Winslow and Bradford do with great reluctance, mindful that the Bay Colony is vastly more powerful and might well absorb them. He and his settlers move west across the river and found Providence under the protection of his allies among the Narragansetts. Their great sachem, Canonicus, grants Williams and his settlers land, and out of great respect for their friendship refuses payment.
August 24, 1636 – At the direction of the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Endecott leaves Boston with a force of 90 armed men for Block Island to avenge John Oldham’s murder. He fails to find any Indians around, so over the next few days Endecott leads his men to the Connecticut coast where he completely misunderstands the intertribal relations and attacks the Pequots. They evade him, so he burns down a bunch of crops without inflicting more than a couple of casualties. During the fall of 1636, the Pequots launch small reprisals against English interests in the area, but in general there was very little fighting.
Fall 1636 – Sir Henry Vane, then governor of Massachusetts Bay, requests the assistance of Roger Williams to negotiate a pledge of neutrality from the Narragansetts, who were being courted by the Pequots to join in their war against the English. Williams translates for the Narragansetts, who enter into a written treaty with the Bay.
October 1636 – The magistrates and clergy of Massachusetts Bay met in Boston for the regular meeting of the General Court. Thomas Shepard, minister at Cambridge, Hugh Peter, minister at Salem, and other clerical leaders meet with John Cotton and John Wheelwright in Cotton’s home to discuss doctrinal differences sparked by Anne Hutchinson’s after-church talks.
December 1636 – The magistrates and clergy call upon Anne Hutchinson to answer questions about her preaching for the first time. Boston is increasingly divided into pro- and anti-Hutchinson camps, in part because Hutchinson’s followers oppose waging war on the Pequots.
January 19, 1637 – The leaders of the Massachusetts Bay call for a day of fasting to promote Colony-wide reflection on its external and internal crises. Anne Hutchinson’s brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, gives an extremely divisive sermon that does more to polarize the factions around Hutchinson than reconcile them.
February 22, 1637 – The Pequots launch a major attack at Fort Saybrook. The Pequot War resumes in full fury.
1637 – Thomas Morton publishes New English Canaan, a scathing attack on the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Puritans of Massachusetts.
April 18, 1637 – Massachusetts Bay Colony raises a force of 150 men to reinforce Fort Saybrook against future attacks by the Pequots.
April 23, 1637 – Pequots attack the English settlement of Wethersfield, on the Connecticut River a few miles south of the Dutch Fort Hope and the English town of Hartford. They killed six English men working in the fields, three women, twenty cows, and a mare. They captured and took away two English girls.
April 30, 1637 – Charles I imposes exit restrictions on Puritans who want to emigrate. The Hector, which carried 250 Puritans to New England under the leadership of John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, departed just before the new requirement for permission to leave.
May 16, 1637 – In response to the attack at Wethersfield, the Connecticut General Court at Hartford declared an offensive war against the Pequots. They raise a force of 90 soldiers, and requisitioned the shallop of the merchant William Pynchon, the ancestor of the great 20th century novelist Thomas Pynchon, to take the new soldiers downriver.
May 17, 1637 – The General Court of Massachusetts Bay holds elections on the town common in Newtown, soon to be Cambridge. Sir Henry Vane, the governor of the colony and a supporter of Anne Hutchinson, is turned out of office and replaced with John Winthrop. The government of the Bay is now solidly in the hands of men who oppose Anne Hutchinson’s teachings. In the coming months, the clergy develop a list of “82 errors” in Hutchinson’s teaching. John Cotton, Hutchinson’s minister since England, tries to shape a compromise.
May 24, 1637 – A mixed force of English soldiers under Captains John Underhill and John Mason and Narragansett fighters reach the territory of the eastern Niantics. There they recruit more allies, bringing the total force to about 500 English and Indian soldiers. They plan to attack the Pequot fortified village at Mystic, Connecticut.
May 26, 1637 – The English, Narragansetts, and Niantics attack the Pequot fort at Mystic. They English break through the palisade, set fire to the buildings, and their Indian allies surround the town to prevent Pequots from escaping. As many as 700 Pequots die, shocking even the Narragansetts. For sheer brutality, this was the bloodiest fighting between Europeans and Indians in today’s United States since at least 1599, when Spanish under Don Juan de Onate, the so-called last conquistador, slaughtered eight hundred or more Pueblo Indians at Acoma mesa in New Mexico.
June – August 1637 – The English and their Indian allies pursue remaining Pequots, who flee west through Connecticut to New Netherland and south to Long Island. Pequot sachems who flee into the Hudson valley are killed by Mohawks, who send the skin and hair of seven of them to Boston, presumably to ward off English incursions into their territory.
June 7, 1637 – Samuell Gorton and family arrive at Portsmouth, Aquidneck, Rhode Island.
June 26, 1637 – The Hector and its consort arrive in Boston.
August 20, 1637 – Roger Williams drafts and the town adopts the Providence Agreement, which establishes majority rule as the basis for government in Providence.
August 31, 1637 – Theophilus Eaton leads some of the men from the Hector to explore the coast of Connecticut west of Fort Saybrook. Their purpose was to find a suitable place to establish a colony. They reach Quinnipiac, the site of the future New Haven, and spend the rest of September investigating the area. By early October, Eaton and most of the men return to Boston, but leave behind seven men to build a house.
November 1637 – The General Court of Massachusetts Bay banishes John Wheelwright, and orders Anne Hutchinson’s male supporters to surrender their arms. Anne Hutchinson herself appears before the Court and is interrogated on her religious views for two days. Now 46, she is ill from a pregnancy, and yet manages to parry the charges against her. She declines all efforts to get her to recant or qualify her opinions. After a theologically intricate trial, the General Court convicted Hutchinson of heresy and sentenced her to be banished with the coming of spring, pending the finding of her church’s inquiry.
Winter 1637-38 – Anne Hutchinson spends the winter before her banishment in the house of a minister in Roxbury.
January 25, 1638 – The first session of the General Assembly of Maryland for which records survive sat in St. Mary’s City, with intermittent recesses, until March 24.
February 25, 1638 – Leonard Calvert and 30 musketeers take over Kent Island while William Claiborne is back in London.
March 7, 1638 – The male relatives and followers of Anne Hutchinson prepare her for exile on Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay, and sign the Portsmouth Compact, an agreement for their governance.
Early to mid-March, 1638 – The Kalmar Nyckel and the Gripen, carrying the first settlers for New Sweden, arrive at the mouth of the Delaware and proceed directly to the site of today’s Wilmington.
March 15, 1638 – Anne Hutchinson now goes on trial in her church to determine whether the church’s compact with her has been broken. She is excommunicated, as expected.
March 29, 1638 – Five Lenape chiefs, known to us as Mattahorn, Metatsimint, Elupacken, Mahamen, and Chiton, came aboard the Kalmar Nyckel. They agreed to convey to Peter Minuit on behalf of his Swedish investors all the land they needed to start a colony in return for a pile of the usual trade goods, including cloth, axes, iron pots, mirrors, and the like. They affixed their marks to two deeds. The first transferred lands from the Minquas Kill south to at least Duck Creek, the mouth of which is at today’s Woodland Beach, Delaware. The second deed conveyed lands north to the Schuykill River, which flows into the Delaware River just north of Philadelphia International Airport, although one source said it went as far north as the west bank opposite Trenton, now Morrisville, Pennsylvania. There was no western limit in either deed.
End of March 1638 – Willem Kieft arrives in New Amsterdam and becomes the next governor of New Netherland. It would not go well.
April 1, 1638 – Anne Hutchinson and a few of her friends and followers begin the week-long walk to Rhode Island, and exile. The Puritan clergy of the Bay make periodic attempts over the next few years to persuade her to recant, sometimes with threats.
April 14, 1638 – The main group of settlers under John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton arrive at Quinnipiac, and found the colony that will soon be named New Haven. Their original group of 250 settlers on the Hector had grown to 400 during their winter in Boston, as John Davenport built his flock.
April 1638 – John Wheelwright, now banished to New Hampshire, buys land and founds the settlement of Exeter, New Hampshire.
November 24, 1638 – Theophilus Eaton and John Davenport enter into a deed with the sachem Momaugin to memorialize their earlier agreement for land in the vicinity of Quinnipiac for their settlement.
April 3, 1639 – Charles I grants the proprietary colony of Maine to Sir Ferdinando Gorges.
June 4, 1639 – The freemen of Quinnipiac gather to establish their government. John Davenport persuades them to run the colony in strict accordance with the laws of God as described in the Scriptures, and to limit the franchise and participation in government to church members. Davenport would determine who would be admitted to the church as members.
September 15, 1639 – Willem Kieft, governor of New Netherland, proposes to his council of advisors that Indians under the protection of the Dutch be taxed to pay for Dutch military expenses. This he attempts to do over the council’s objections.
Late 1639 – About 50 settlers at Quinnipiac leave and settle along the coast about ten miles away, still under the jurisdiction of New Haven Colony. They would soon build the first mill in the area, and on November 24, 1640 would name their town Milford.
July 1, 1640 – The General Court of New Haven purchases land from the local Indians in the area of today’s Stamford, Connecticut for the purpose of settlement. On November 4 New Haven would sell the same land to a group of settlers from Weathersfield, Connecticut who wanted to live under the strict religious regime of New Haven Colony.
July 4, 1641 – Willem Kieft, governor of New Netherland, puts a bounty on the heads of the Raritan Nation, raising tension among the tribes in the area of Manhattan.
August 1641 – A 27 year-old Wickquasgeck Indian murders an old Dutch merchant, Claes Swits, in his home, which stood approximately at the corner of today’s 2nd Avenue and 47th Street in New York City. Governor Kieft uses Swits’ murder as a pretext to launch a wider war against Indians in the region.
August 9, 1641 – Charles I appoints Sir William Berkeley governor of Virginia.
March 23, 1642 – The Maryland General Assembly proceedings show that among the freemen in attendance, and thereby permitted to vote, was Mathias de Sousa, a free Black man and trader.
May 17, 1642 – The French found Montreal, around 150 miles southwest (and upriver) of Quebec City. Their purpose was to gain a trading post closer to the retreating lengthening supply lines for fur.
Summer of 1642 – Will Hutchinson having died that spring, Anne Hutchinson fears that the Bay Colony will continue to pursue her. She and her household, sixteen people, leave Aquidneck Island and move to the Bronx to live under the Dutch of New Netherland. She and most of her household would die the following summer at the hands of Indians during Kieft’s War.
September 23, 1642 – Harvard graduates its first class, Governor John Winthrop presiding over the commencement. Among the graduates was George Downing, Winthrop’s nephew, who would go on to become a decisive figure in England’s expansion during the Stuart Restoration.
November 13, 1642 – John Lewger, secretary of the Maryland Proprietary, takes the deposition of Mathias de Sousa, a free Black man and trader.
February 14, 1643 – Johan Björnsson Printz, the new governor of New Sweden on the Delaware, arrives at Fort Christina (Wilmington) with his wife and five daughters and a son. One of those daughters, Armegot, would settle in the region and live there until 1675 under successive rule by Sweden, the Dutch, and English administration.
February 23, 1643 – The bloodiest day in Keift’s War. Kieft ordered two nighttime attacks, one on Indians camped at Pavonia, the site of today’s Jersey City, and the other at Corlaer’s Hook on the East River, a spot of land just below the Williamsburg Bridge.
Spring 1643 – Roger Williams travels back to England to secure a charter for Rhode Island. He stops in New Amsterdam to secure passage to England, and while there may have helped broker a truce in Kieft’s War. During the voyage at sea he writes A Key Into the Language of America, or an Help to the Language of the Natives in That Part of America, Called New-England. In addition to being one of the earliest European studies of Indian language, it establishes Williams as a credible expert on New England. Williams arrives in London in June.
May 19, 1643 – Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven colonies form the United Colonies of New England to provide for mutual defense against both Indian Nations and New Netherland. They pointedly exclude Rhode Island from membership.
January 12, 1643 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony tries to confine Rhode Island by purchasing land from two minor Narragansett sachems in Pawtuxet through proxies. This sets up a crisis in governance in Rhode Island, which requires Roger Williams to go to England to secure a charter.
1643 – Thomas Morton, now almost 70, returns to New England. William Bradford, always forgiving, lets him spent the winter in Plymouth over the objections of Myles Standish, but requires him to leave in the spring of 1644. He goes to Massachusetts Bay, where he is banished again, this time to the coast of Maine. There he dies in 1647.
January 18, 1644 – Acting governor of Maryland, Giles Brent, on a pretext orders the arrest of Richard Ingle, a Protestant trader and master of the ship Reformation. Ingles had sued the Giles Brent and his sister Margaret for various reasons the year before, and those cases were still pending. This was the first origin of “the Plundering Time” of Maryland during the English Civil War.
January 26, 1644 – Charles I grants Leonard Calvert, governor of the Maryland Proprietary, a commission (essentially an expansive letter of marque) that give broad powers to Leonard Calvert for taking ships, cargoes, and debts, on sea or on land, that belonged to residents of London or other ports then in rebellion against the Crown.
March 16, 1644 – Roger Williams secures a charter for Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations that “passed the table” with all appropriate process, signatures, and seals. The charter specifically authorizes a democratic form of government. Williams also obtained a letter of safe conduct signed by leading members of Parliament, which would allow him to return to Providence with his charter via Boston, where he could not now be arrested notwithstanding his banishment eight years before.
April 10, 1644 – Ships loyal to Parliament and the Crown, respectively, exchange fire on the James River in Virginia. Not only does this raise the possibility of the English Civil War spreading to North America in a big way, but it suggests to Opechancanough that the Civil War might make the English vulnerable to attack.
April 18, 1644 – Opechancanough launches the Third Anglo-Powhatan War, and once again the English were caught entirely off-guard.
September 6, 1644 – Leonard Calvert, having obtained his commission to plunder pro-Parliament ships and properties on land from Charles I, returns to Maryland. He relieved acting governor Giles Brent, who was up at Kent Island, and forthwith sailed down the Chesapeake to enforce his commission against Parliamentarians in Virginia. On October 1 he meets with the Virginia General Assembly, which is Royalist but far more concerned with staying united in the war against Opechancanough than alienating Parliamentarian Virginians.
September 17, 1644 – Roger Williams returns to Boston bearing Rhode Island’s new charter and his letter of safe conduct.
November 23, 1644 – After having befriended Roger Williams, John Milton publishes Areopagitica, today considered among history’s most influential philosophical defenses of the right to speech and expression. Areopagitica represents a reversal in Milton’s opinion, which may have happened under Williams’ influence.
Mid-December 1644 – Richard Ingle, now bearing his own letter of marque from Parliament, and his ship Reformation reach Virginia on the way back to Maryland. There he learns about Calvert’s commission to plunder Parliamentarians.
~December 24, 1644 – William Claiborne, with two ships and a few armed men, lands at Kent Island in the Chesapeake planning to incite rebellion against Giles Brent and the Calverts. He fails, and soon thereafter sails away.
February 14, 1645 – Richard Ingle and his ship Reformation reach St. Mary’s City, now even more unhappy with the Calverts. Over the next few weeks he captures a Dutch ship trading with Royalists, and stirs up the colony’s Protestant residents into a revolt. And, yes, he plunders assets of the Catholics, especially the priests. The population of Maryland temporarily falls by 80% because most people flee to Virginia during the Plundering Time.
Summer 1645 – Protestants set up a provisional government in Maryland, and declare themselves no longer under the authority of the Calverts. There are fewer than 100 remaining residents.
Late 1645 – Hugh and Mary Parsons marry in Springfield, Massachusetts.
January 1646 – George Lamberton’s ship sets sail from New Haven, after workers cut a path through the ice on the frozen harbor for a distance of three miles. It would never be seen again. Or would it?
Summer 1646 – The English in Virginia capture Opechancanough, who is by then close to 100 years old. In the words of Robert Beverley, writing early in the 18th century, “one of the soldiers, resenting the calamities the colony had suffered by this prince’s means, basely shot him through the back, after he was made prisoner; of which wound he died.”
December 1646 – Leonard Calvert had returned to Maryland with a force of 28 soldiers and a promise of amnesty for rebels who declared their loyalty to the Calverts, and by December 29 St. Mary’s City was back in his control with no blood having been spilled.
April 1647 – Leonard Calvert regains control of Kent Island from Protestant rebels. The Plundering Time is over.
June 9, 1647 – Leonard Calvert dies in Maryland after a brief but severe illness. On his deathbed, he names Margaret Brent his executor.
January 21, 1648 – Margaret Brent, executor for Leonard Calvert’s estate, appears at the Maryland Assembly and demands two votes, one for her as a landholder and a second in her capacity as Lord Baltimore’s legal representative (by virtue of being Calvert’s executor). Her request was respectfully denied.
March 14, 1648 – The town of Shawomet, is admitted to the colony of Providence, along with Portsmouth and Newport on Aquidneck.
June 15, 1648 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony hangs Margaret Jones for witchcraft on the Boston Common. She is the second person executed for witchcraft in New England.
June 1648 – Numerous witnesses in New Haven testify to having seen a “ghost ship,” thought to be George Lamberton’s lost vessel.
January 30, 1649 – Parliament executes Charles I after its victory in the English Civil Wars. His death warrant is signed by 59 commissioners, known as “judges.”
July 3, 1649 – The Katten, supplied with arms, ammo, food, and a bunch of new colonists, mostly Finns, sails from Sweden to resupply New Sweden on the Delaware. She and her passengers would meet an extremely ugly fate in the Caribbean. The failure of the Katten to reach New Sweden probably sealed the fate of the colony.
February 26, 1651 – William Pynchon, the chief magistrate of Springfield, receives complaints against Mary Parsons, alleging that she is a witch.
March 1651 – Baby Joshua Parsons dies under the care of his mother Mary, who does not deny having murdered him. On March 24, 1651, Springfield sends Hugh and Mary Parsons, cuffed to each other, to Boston for trial for capital offenses.
May 13, 1651 – Mary Parsons goes to trial in Boston, John Endecott presiding. She confesses to murdering her baby Joshua on the stand, and is convicted of murder. She is sentenced to hang on May 29, 1651, but she dies in prison before that date.
May 12, 1652 – After a series of continuances, Hugh Parsons goes on trial for witchcraft after having been in jail for more than a year. He is convicted by the Court of Assistants. Within two weeks, the General Court, sitting as an appellate court, reversed the conviction and released him. He would eventually move to Rhode Island, and would live until June 18, 1685.
May 19, 1652 – The First Anglo-Dutch War begins. It would go very badly for the United Provinces.
June 5, 1652 – Englishman Thomas Chambers, a carpenter who had been working in New Amsterdam, buys land from Esopus sachems Ankerop and Sowappekat on the west bank of the Hudson near today’s Kingston, New York. Then it is in the territory of New Netherland. Chambers is the first European to settle in the area.
July 17, 1652 – “[I]n the chapel of Whitehall Palace in Westminster, … in front of a congregation composed of Oliver Cromwell … and various republican dignitaries and soldiers, a [Quaker] woman appeared “stark naked”. According to several witnesses, she called out, ‘Resurrection, I am ready for thee,’ before being removed by the guards and causing considerable disturbance.”
October 2, 1652 – Roger Williams, back in London, secures a reaffirmation of Rhode Island’s charter.
September 1653 – Trader Nicholas Batts explores northeastern North Carolina, the first Englishman known to have done for more than 30 years. He speaks coastal Algonquian, and establishes good relations with the Indians in the region. He brought North Carolina Indian leaders back to the home of his employer, Sir Francis Yeardley. A visiting chief is so taken with seeing Yeardley’s daughters read that he asks if he can send his son to be taught, and Yeardley agrees. Yeardley offers to send carpenters to build the chief an English house.
December 15, 1653 – Johan Klaesson Rising is appointed assistant governor of New Sweden, but he would immediately become governor once it is learned that Governor Printz had already set sail for Sweden.
April 22, 1654 – The Treaty of Westminster settles the first Anglo-Dutch War, just in time to stave off a New English invasion of New Netherland.
May 1, 1654 – A group of 45 Roanoke Indians, including their chief, visit Sir Francis Yeardley at his home in Virginia. He is away, so his wife Sarah gamely entertained them. Yeardley and his trader Nicholas Batts would go on to develop extensive trading networks in North Carolina, including with the Tuscaroras, which would be the foundation of Old Albemarle County south of the Great Dismal Swamp.
May 19, 1654 – The General Court at Fort Orange bans the sale of alcohol to Esopus Indians.
May 21, 1654 – Johan Rising and roughly 300 settlers arrive in New Sweden.
March 24, 1655 – The Battle of the Severn River, in which Maryland’s royalist acting governor William Stone attacks a settlement of rebellious Puritans on the Severn River. It ends calamitously for Stone and his forces, who lose 17 dead and 30 wounded in a very short time.
May 8, 1655 – Edward Winslow of Plymouth Colony dies.
August 31, 1655 – Governor of New Netherland Pieter Stuyvesant arrives at the mouth of the Delaware with more than 500 soldiers and sailors. His objective is to take over New Sweden, which he accomplishes in a series of bloodless confrontations and negotiations over the next two weeks. Governor Rising and New Sweden surrender to the Dutch on September 15, 1655.
September 15, 1655 – The “Peach Tree” War begins. An armada of canoes loaded with five to six hundred Munsee and Hackensack Indians, and fewer members of other tribes in the region, moved silently across the Hudson to the southernmost point of Manhattan. They then rampaged through the city.
May 9, 1657 – William Bradford of Plymouth Colony dies.
September 3, 1658 – Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, dies. More than a year of political uncertainly follows.
September 20, 1659 – At Esopus (near Kingston, New York) and environs, a band of six inhabitants and six soldiers plus their respective leaders, Jacob Jansen Stoll and Sergeant Andries Lourensen, encountered a party of four Indians who lay huddled around a campfire in an intoxicated stupor. The Indians had been given liquor by Thomas Chambers, in exchange for husking corn. Without apparent provocation, Stoll, the sergeant, and several other Dutch attacked the four Indians. One Indian was shot in the head, another was taken prisoner. The next day Esopus Indians counterattacked, and war was on.
October 8, 1659 – Hundreds of Esopus soldiers besiege the palisaded Dutch settlement. There are only a few Dutch casualties, but the Indians destroy most of the settlers’ livestock outside the fort. On October 9 the settlers lift the siege, and on October 10 Peter Stuyvesant arrives with 180 armed men.
February 2, 1660 – General George Monck, the future Duke of Albemarle, finally intervenes in the English succession crisis following Oliver Cromwell’s death, and leads his army of Scotland into London unopposed. By the end of March the final rump of the Long Parliament dissolved itself, and a royalist Parliament was elected in its stead.
March 12, 1660 – The lower house of the Maryland Assembly, over the protests of Philip Calvert, declares it “is the highest court of Judicature,” in effect a repudiation of the authority of the proprietors. This is known as Fendall’s Rebellion.
March 17, 1660 – Near today’s Kingston, NY, a detachment of forty soldiers under Dutch command stumbled upon a group of sixty or more Esopus Indians about 11 miles out from the settlement. They attacked, and killed 3 or 4 Indians and captured as many as fifteen. The Dutch destroyed the village, including a large quantity of maize, and bear meat and skins. Twelve of the Indian captives, considered to be important men in their community, were sent down the Hudson to New Amsterdam.
May 1, 1660 – The new Parliament votes to restore the monarchy. During the next month, Charles II returns to London triumphantly from exile in France.
May 25, 1660 – Peter Stuyvesant sends 10 captured Esopus Indians to Curacao to be enslaved, his purpose being to increase pressure on the Esopus leadership to come to peace.
July 15, 1660 – Peter Stuyvesant comes to Esopus in the central Hudson valley to participate in a ceremony ending the First Esopus War.
July 27, 1660 – Edward Whalley and William Goffe, both “regicides” who had signed the death warrant of King Charles I in 1649, arrive in Boston, having fled England to avoid probable execution. On August 11 John Davenport sends a letter from New Haven to Boston saying that he knew who Whalley and Goffe were and would like to meet them. Whalley and Goffe move to Cambridge to live with Daniel Gookin.
August 29, 1660 – Parliament passes the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, which calls for the “judges” who signed the death warrant of Charles I to be hunted down. On September 22 Charles II put a bounty of 100 pounds sterling on the heads of each of Whalley and Goffe.
February 22, 1661 – Governor John Endecott convenes the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay to discuss the fate of Whalley and Goffe, because he is increasingly worried about sheltering the regicides in the face of the King’s order to hunt them down. On February 26 the two fugitives set out by foot for New Haven. They reach New Haven on March 7, and move in with John Davenport. Word gets around that they are staying with Davenport, and on April 30 they move secretly to the home of William Jones.
April 28, 1661 – John Endecott receives an order from London to hunt down Whalley and Goffe, and on May 7 engages two Royalists to search for them. They go to New Haven, get the runaround from the Puritans there who are protecting the regicides, and after three futile weeks return to Boston on May 30.
May 15, 1661 – Whalley and Goffe move to the farm of Richard Sperry, and shelter in a rock formation now known as “Judge’s Rock.”
May 16, 1661 – Peter Stuyvesant establishes a plan of government for Wildwyck, the Dutch settlement formerly known as Esopus in the vicinity of today’s Kingston.
August 19, 1661 – Whalley and Goffe move to Milford and live secretly in the house of Michael Tomkins for the next two years.
April 23, 1662 – John Winthrop the Younger secures a new charter for the Connecticut Colony from Charles II. This would put Connecticut in the position to pressure New Haven Colony, which had no charter, to submit itself to Connecticut.
August 14, 1662 – A group of New Englanders, who had no charter or other authorization, set sail from Charlestown, Massachusetts Bay, for the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, bringing cattle and pigs and fully intending to put down stakes. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the Bay men had such a rough go of it that they returned to Massachusetts after a few months, leaving at least some of their livestock to roam free.
March 24, 1663 – Charles II establishes the Proprietary of Carolina for the benefit of George, Duke of Albemarle; Edward, Earl of Clarendon; William, Lord Craven; John, Lord Berkeley; Anthony, Lord Ashley; Sir George Carteret; Sir William Berkeley, who was again the governor of Virginia; and Sir John Colleton. These eight men, along with James, Duke of York (and the future James II), Prince Rupert, and William Penn would become the key players in English North America during the Stuart Restoration.
June 7, 1663 – Soldiers of the Esopus Indians attacked the fortified Dutch settlements of New Village – now Hurley, New York – and Wildwyck, now Kingston. New Village was fundamentally destroyed. Wildwyck, more populous and better defended, fought off the attack but not before suffering grievous casualties. So began the Second Esopus War.
June 14, 1663 – Peter Stuyvesant arrives at Wildwyck and gives orders for the administration of the new war against the Esopus.
July 26, 1663 – Dutch commander Martin Kregier left Wildwyck with an army of over 200 men, including 35 local volunteers and 41 Indians from Long Island, with a captive Indian woman as guide. They arrived at the Esopus Indian fort late in the day on the 27th and found it deserted, save for an Indian woman in a nearby field of maize. The next day, Kregier’s army destroyed about 200 acres of maize and more than 100 storage pits of corn and beans. On the 31st, Kregier’s men burned the stockade and all the houses. They marched out with the blaze raging, arriving back at Wildwyck about nine o’clock that evening.
August 10, 1663 – William Hilton, in command of the ship Adventure, sails from Speightstown, Barbados to explore the coast of southern Carolina. The expedition arrives off Fripp Island, South Carolina, on August 26.
September 13, 1663 – English, Irish, African and Indian indentured servants and slaves in Gloucester County, Virginia conspired to revolt, the first meaningful slave revolt in English North America. The plot was foiled when one of the servants, John Birkenhead, tipped off the authorities. It is also considered by some to be a precursor of Bacon’s Rebellion.
October 1, 1663 – Having learned of a new Esopus fort, Martin Kregier and his men again marched out of Wildwyck. They proceeded to the site of the New Fort, arriving there on October 2. It had largely been abandoned, and the Dutch destroyed it. This was the last meaningful military action of the Second Esopus War.
October 16, 1663 – William Hilton and the Adventure, having explored Port Royal on the coast of today’s South Carolina, arrive at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. They would explore the river and its tributaries until December 4, 1663.
January 1664 – The English Council for Foreign Plantations decides that New Netherland must be conquered for England.
March 12, 1664 – Charles II grants his brother James, Duke of York, a vast stretch of English North America from Maine to the eastern side of Delaware Bay, carving out Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
May 15, 1664 – The peace treaty ending the Second Esopus War was concluded with surviving Esopus sachems at New Amsterdam.
May 29, 1664 – John Vassall landed a colony of Barbadians and possibly a few New Englanders on the Cape Fear River, founding Charles Towne. It would be abandoned by early 1667.
June 24, 1664 – James, Duke of York and Albany, conveys New Caesarea, otherwise known as New Jersey, to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. Unfortunately, York’s first governor in New York and New Jersey, Richard Nicolls, would not learn that this had happened for quite some time.
July 1664 – Four “royal commissioners” and 400 soldiers come to Boston. Their purpose is to investigate the English colonies in New England, which are suspected of anti-Royalist sentiments, and reduce New Netherland. They are also charged with hunting the fugitive regicides Whalley and Goffe.
August 24, 1664 – The Duke of York’s fleet, under the command of Richard Nicolls, arrives off New Amsterdam.
September 8, 1664 – The Duke of York secures the surrender of New Amsterdam and takes over New Netherland.
October 13, 1664 – Whalley and Goffe leave Milford and move to Hadley, Massachusetts, where they take shelter.
October 28, 1664 – Captain John Baker, acting on behalf of others, negotiates the purchase of the land between the Passaic River and the Raritan River from local sachems. On December 1, 1664, Governor Richard Nicolls grants them the land from the Duke of York’s proprietary. This becomes Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and encompasses more than 500,000 acres. Among the first four settlers was John Ogden, ancestor of your podcaster! (Ogden had built the first stone church in New Amsterdam in 1642, and in 1644 established the first commercial whaling operation in North America based on Long Island.)
December 13, 1664 – After several years of political maneuvering, New Haven Colony agrees to merge into Connecticut Colony and submit itself to the jurisdiction of Connecticut’s General Court.
February 10, 1665 – John Dixwell, another regicide hiding in New England about whom we know little, visits Whalley and Goffe in Hadley. Dixwell had been much more careful about concealing his identity, and went by the pseudonym James Davids. Dixwell moved to New Haven, and lived there until his death on March 18, 1689.
February 10, 1665 – Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, proprietors of New Jersey, promulgate The Concession and Agreement of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of New Caesarea, or New Jersey, to and With all and Every the Adventurers and All Such as Shall Settle or Plant There.
March 4, 1665 – The Second Anglo-Dutch War begins with an English declaration.
April 4, 1665 – Governor Richard Nicolls issues the “Navesink patent,” covering today’s Monmouth County, New Jersey. This is the basis of the townships of Middletown and Shrewsbury.
June 3, 1665 – In the opening battle of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the English defeat the Dutch in a naval engagement off Lowestoft on the North Sea coast of England. This prompts the Dutch to reorganize their chain of command. On August 11, 1665, Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter becomes commander-in-chief of the combined navies of the United Provinces.
June 30, 1665 – The execution of the “Concessions and Agreements of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of Carolina, 1665,” an amended and restated version of the original proprietary grant for Carolina.
July 29, 1665 – Philip Carteret, 26 years old and cousin of Sir George Carteret, arrives at New York harbor. On August 1 he succeeds Richard Nicolls as governor of New Jersey. He informs Nicolls that James, Duke of York, has transferred New Jersey to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, which calls into question grants made by Nicolls in New Jersey.
May 21, 1666 – Puritans from various of New Haven Colony’s satellite towns signed an agreement to establish Newark, New Jersey, named in honor of the reverend Abraham Pierson, whose old home was in Newark-on-Trent in today’s Nottinghamshire, England.
June 1-5, 1666 – In the Second Anglo-Dutch War, Admiral Michiel de Ruyter defeats George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, in the “Four Days’ Battle,” one of the longest and bloodiest naval engagements in European history up to that point.
June 16, 1666 – Robert Sandford, late of Surinam and Barbados, and 20 other men leave the Cape Fear River to explore South Carolina south of Cape Romain. He would return on July 12, having explored Port Royal, Edisto, Kiawah, and Charleston Harbor, and having named the Ashley River. Sandford would recommend Port Royal (the harbor behind Hilton Head) to be the site of the first English settlement in South Carolina.
July 25, 1666 – In the Second Anglo-Dutch War, George Monck and Prince Rupert for the English and Admiral Michiel de Ruyter for the Dutch fight to a stalemate in the St. James Day Battle.
September 2, 1666 – The Great Fire of London begins, and pauses the ability of the English to wage offensive war against the Dutch.
December 11, 1666 – John Ogden, Daniel Pierce, and other owners of the Elizabethtown, New Jersey patent originally confirmed by Richard Nicolls sell a piece between the Rahway and Raritan rivers. It becomes the town of Woodbridge, New Jersey.
December 16, 1666 – Daniel Pierce, one of the owners of the vast Elizabethtown patent, sells the western third of his holdings to a group of men from New Hampshire, who form the town of Piscataway, named for the Piscataqua River, which divides New Hampshire and Maine.
June 4, 1667 – Metacom (“King Philip”), sachem of the Pokanoket community and top sachem of the Wampanoag nation, appears before the court at Plymouth Colony to deny rumors that he is preparing to wage war on the English.
June 5-11, 1667 – The Zeelander Commander Abraham Crijnssen, fresh off having conquered Suriname in February of that year and having attacked English possessions in the West Indies in April, attacks and captures most of the Virginia tobacco fleet then gathering in the Chesapeake to sail for England. This becomes known as the First Battle of the James River.
June 10-15, 1667 – In the Second Anglo-Dutch War, a Dutch fleet under the command of Admiral Michiel de Ruyter attacks the English fleet anchored and uncrewed at Chatham, capturing or destroying 16 of the most powerful English ships. This becomes known as the Raid on the Medway, and it so improves the Dutch military position that the war is settled within six weeks to their advantage.
July 31, 1667 – The Treaty of Breda is signed, ending the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Among other terms, England retained control of New York, but ceded Acadia to the French, who were notional allies of the Dutch. Acadia included Maine south to the Kennebac River.
January 23, 1668 – England and the Netherlands enter into a Protestant alliance, and Sweden joins on April 25. This treaty is then known as the Triple Allliance.
May 29, 1668 – The dread pirate Robert Searles attacks St. Augustine and pillages the city, but does not burn it down. He takes soundings of the harbor on the way out, suggesting he intends to return. In response Spain constructs Fort San Marcos.
May 30, 1668 – The first Assembly of New Jersey meets in Elizabethtown and assesses a tax on the towns of the colony. They are not delighted, and mostly refuse to pay.
March 1, 1669 – The Proprietors of Carolina approve the The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, drafted principally by Lord Ashley, Earl of Shaftsbury, and John Locke. They are never implemented, but are important to understanding the origins of American constitutional development.
June 1, 1669 – Woodbridge, New Jersey receives a charter from Governor Philip Carteret.
August 17, 1669 – The Carolina, the Port Royal, and the Albemarle, carrying the first settlers to today’s South Carolina, set sail from England.
November 2, 1669 – The Albemarle is wrecked during a hurricane at Barbados.
January 12, 1670 – The Port Royal is wrecked at Abaco, in the Bahamas.
February 26, 1670 – The reconstituted fleet for the Carolinas, now consisting of the Carolina, the Three Brothers, and an unnamed Bermudan sloop, leave Bermuda for Port Royal, South Carolina.
March 25, 1670 – Quitrents are first due to the proprietors of New Jersey, Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. Their attempts to collect lead to a tax revolt in today’s Monmouth County that quickly spreads to other settlements in the colony.
May 15, 1670 – The Three Brothers, now separated from the Carolina fleet, arrives at St. Catherine’s island in Georgia. The ship is attacked by Spaniards and Indians, and the captain and several others are taken prisoner, eventually to go to St. Augustine.
May 22, 1670 – King Charles II and France’s Louis XIV enter into a secret treaty in which they agree to wage war against the United Provinces of the Netherlands. France agrees to substantial subsidies for Charles II, conditioned on his conversion to Catholicism. On December 21, 1670, a group of high ranking nobles known as the “Cabal” enter into a treaty with France that specifies the forces each side will contribute in a war on the Dutch, but omits the requirement that Charles convert.
July 8, 1670 – England and Spain sign the Treaty of Madrid, mostly to gang up on the French. The treaty resolves competing claims to North America, providing that England shall have sovereignty over lands previously settled by them, and Spain likewise. Carolina is unspecified, and would become a point of contention between the two countries.
June 19, 1671 – The town meeting of Elizabethtown, New Jersey rejects a grant of land by Governor Carteret to his servant, and join other towns in rejecting Carteret’s authority in such matters.
September 1, 1671 – The new settlement on the right bank of the Ashley River, just across from today’s Charleston, adopts the name Charles Town.
September 21, 1671 – Governor Joseph West of Carolina and his council declare war on the Kussoe nation, after the Kussoes align with the Spanish. The Carolinians launch a pre-emptive raid, and sell captives into slavery in the West Indies, the first of many such transactions.
September 24, 1671 – Metacom (“King Philip”), top sachem of the Wampanoag nation, is forced by Plymouth Colony and Rhode Island to sign a new treaty that subjects the Wampanoag to the authority not only of the King of England (which had been the case for years), but now also to Plymouth Colony. Philip is deeply resentful, and loses all trust in the English, with the continuing exception of the Rhode Islanders.
March 12, 1672 – In an attempt to provoke war with the Dutch, Sir Robert Holmes, in command of a fleet of nine warships from Portsmouth, attacked the Dutch “Smyrna Fleet,” which was guarded by six warships. Among its commanders was a “sagacious, 30-year-old Zeelander” named Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest, already feared for his bravery in the second Anglo-Dutch war, and already known as “Kees the Devil.” The Dutch save 62 of their 66 merchantmen in the ensuing battle.
March 17, 1672 – England declares war on the United Provinces of the Netherlands, and France does the same on March 27. The Third Anglo-Dutch War is on.
May 14, 1672 – The rebellious towns of New Jersey convene an unlawful assembly, and elect Captain James Carteret as “president” of the colony. On May 28 Governor Philip Carteret (cousin to James) declares the assembly unlawful.
June 7, 1672 – The Battle of Solebay in the Third Anglo-Dutch War is a tactical draw but a strategic victory for the Dutch because it prevents the English from landing on their coast and marching on Amsterdam.
June 25, 1672 – With France overrunning the United Provinces of the Netherlands in the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Willem III pulls the remnants of his army behind the “water line” and opens the dikes, protecting Holland and Zeeland.
July 1, 1672 – New Jersey Governor Philip Carteret departs for England to secure the support of the Crown and the proprietors for his authority against the rebellious towns.
July 2, 1672 – William III of the House of Orange-Nassau becomes Stadtholder of the province of Zeeland, and two days later of Holland.
November 30, 1672 – Dutch commander Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest – “Kees the Devil” to friends and foe alike – departs Zeeland with his fleet of six ships, destination St. Helena in the South Atlantic.
December 10, 1672 – King Charles II issues an order demanding that the rebellious towns of New Jersey submit to his authority and that of the proprietors. It does not reach the colony until May 1673.
February 8, 1673 – Cornelis Evertsen’s Dutch fleet, having captured several prizes in its journey to St. Helena, stops in the Canaries to get water, food, and intelligence. There they encounter a larger English fleet also heading to St. Helena, and barely escape. On February 24th, west of the Canaries, Evertsen opens his secret orders, which direct him to sail to the Americas and wreck or capture English and French shipping.
March 16, 1673 – Evertsen’s fleet drops anchor off the Dutch colony of Suriname. There they would give supplies to the starving settlers and careen their ships.
May 15, 1673 – Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette and five voyageurs leave Saux St. Marie in two canoes to begin a four month journey to find the Mississippi.
May 16, 1673 – Evertsen captures prizes off Barbados, and then sails for Martinique.
May 22, 1673 – Off Martinique Evertsen’s fleet has a chance encounter with a squadron led by the Dutch Admiral Jacob Benckes. They combine forces for the raid on America.
June 17, 1673 – Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette and their companions paddle out of the Wisconsin River into the Mississippi, just south of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. They cross to the west bank, and become the first Europeans known to visit Iowa. They are the first Europeans known to visit the Mississippi for 140 years, when the shattered remnants of the Soto entrada sailed from Arkansas to the Gulf.
June 21, 1673 – The combined Dutch fleet of Cornelis Evertsen and Jacob Benckes leaves Puerto Rico after stopping for water and food, destination Chesapeake Bay and its tobacco fleet.
June 25, 1673 – Jolliet and Marquette go ashore in Iowa, at the Des Moines or Iowa River and visit a large town of Illinois Indians, who have fled across the Mississippi to escape Iroquois raids.
Late June 1673 – Under threat of arrest, James Carteret, the unlawful “president” of New Jersey, flees with his wife and a few supporters to Carolina. They would be captured by the Dutch in the Chesapeake less than three weeks later.
July 10, 1673 – The coastwatchers of Virginia first spot the approaching fleet of Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and Jacob Benckes.
July 11-18, 1673 – The Second Battle of the James River: A Dutch fleet under the command of Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and Jacob Benckes attack and pillage the tobacco fleet of Virginia and Maryland in the Chesapeake. On departing from the Chesapeake, the Dutch fleet captures a ketch in the Chesapeake carrying James Carteret, fleeing prosecution in New Jersey for having led a rebellion against the proprietors. Evertson learns about the defenses of New York.
July 14-17, 1673 – Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette reach central Arkansas. They are warned by Indians there not to proceed farther south, because the tribes are hostile and jealously guard access to the Spanish, with whom they trade. On July 17 they begin the long paddle north.
July 28, 1673 – The “raid on America”: The combined fleet of Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and Jacob Benckes, now numbering at least 21 ships, spot the entrance to Lower New York Harbor. The next day Dutch farmers come aboard and give them important intelligence. On July 30, Evertsen and Benckes force the surrender of New York after a bombardment of a couple of hours. On July 31 Evertsen names the town “New Orange.”
August 2, 1673 – Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest appoints Commander Anthony Colve as governor of New Orange, with jurisdiction over all of the now-reconquered New Netherland. He would serve for little more than a year.
August 4, 1673 – Jacques Marquette writes a letter on the east bank of the Mississippi at the site of Memphis. He asks Indians there to deliver it to the Spanish, but instead they give it to a Virginia trader, who passes it down a chain eventually into the hands of William Penn. It finally surfaces for historians in 1893.
August 12, 1673 – The military governing council of New Orange, including Cornelis Evertsen, Jacob Benckes, and Anthony Colve, received a deputation from the dissident settlements of New Jersey, including Newark, Elizabethtown, Woodbridge, and Piscataway.
Summer 1674 – Nathaniel Bacon arrives in Virginia, a few steps ahead of the law. He buys a plantation near the fall line of the James River.
July 21, 1674 – Louis Jolliet, approaching Montreal in a canoe with several others, is caught in rapids and the canoe capsizes. He is the sole survivor. Among other things, he loses his own journal of the voyage of exploration to the Mississippi.
July 29, 1674 – Jolliet reaches Quebec. Having lost his journals he gives oral reports to Governor Frontenac and the Father Dablon, head of the Jesuits in Canada.
October-December 1674 – Jacques Marquette and two voyageurs begin the journey from Green Bay back to Kaskaskia, where Marquette has promised to return. His health and the hardships of winter cause them to set up winter camp near the portage between the Chicago and Des Plaines rivers. On March 29, 1675, they break their winter camp and go to Kaskaskia, arriving on Holy Thursday.
Late 1674 – Edward Whalley dies in Hadley, Massachusetts.
January 29, 1675 – John Sassamon dies at Assawampsett Pond, almost certainly murdered.
May 19, 1675 – Jacques Marquette dies at Ludington, Michigan, on his way to Mackinac. He was buried on the shore of the small lake there that bears his name.
June 8, 1675 – Plymouth Colony executes Tobias and Mattashunnamo, two of the three Nemasket Indians convicted of the murder of John Sassamon. The third, Tobias’ son Wampapaquan, wins a short reprieve when the noose snapped. These executions enrage Metacom (“King Philip”), top sachem of the Wampanoag nation.
June 11, 1675 – Governor Josiah Winslow of Plymouth received a report from a settler at Swansea that sixty Indian fighters were blocking the way to Mount Hope, that Pokanokets had sent their wives to Narragansett country, and Nemaskets, another Wampanoag community, were joining with King Philip.
June 17, 1675 – The deputy governor of Rhode Island, a Quaker named John Easton, meets Philip in the hope of diffusing the crisis. Easton’s account of that meeting, A Relation of the Indian War, is considered the most impartial of the almost forty narratives to come out of King Philip’s War. Easton is too late, because Plymouth has already resolved to march on Philip.
June 20, 1675 – Wampanoag fighting men harrass Swansea, Massachusetts in an attempt to provoke the English settlers into drawing the first blood, but no shots are fired. That would not happen until June 23, when an English “lad” killed an Indian who was sacking a house in the area. Fighting would erupt in several places in western and southern Plymouth Colony on June 24. King Philip’s War was now on.
June 1675 – Doeg Indians steal hogs from Thomas Mathew in Stafford County, Virginia to settle a debt. This sets off a chain of events that leads to Bacon’s Rebellion, including retaliation by English under the command of George Mason and George Brent in July.
July 8, 1675 – King Charles II appointed Thomas, Lord Culpeper, governor of Virginia Colony, the effective date deferred until Sir William Berkeley stepped down from the office, which would not happen for two years and one day. Culpeper would not actually arrive in Virginia until May 3, 1680.
July 14, 1675 – Fighting men who appeared to be Nipmucs attacked the town of Mendon, Massachusetts. Whether the attackers were in fact Nipmucs, many of whom were Christian, was uncertain, but their behavior raised concerns in Boston that they would side with Metacom/King Philip in the war.
July 15, 1675 – Shortly after the outbreak of King Philip’s War, Edward Hutchinson and Thomas Savage backed by a detachment of Massachusetts Bay Colony militia force representatives of the Narragansett sachems to sign a humiliating treaty at Wickford, Rhode Island. But no Narragansett sachem actually signs the document, so they do not regard the treaty as legitimate.
July 16-19, 1675 – Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colony militia penetrate Pocasset Swamp (in roughly today’s Fall River) searching for Philip, Weetamoo, and their people. The fighting was inclusive, but the English withdrew from the swamp. Philip and Weetamoo escape the swamp to the north, and are spotted on July 30 between Rehoboth and Swansea.
August 1, 1675 – A combined force of militia from Swansea, Taunton, and Rehoboth accompanied by Christian Indians from the region and fifty Mohegan fighters catch up with Metacom and Weetamoo about a dozen miles north of Providence. Several hours of intense fighting ends inconclusively, with Wampanoag forces retreating to a hill surrounded by Nipsachuck Swamp. After the battle, Indian scouts allied with the English determine that the enemy has divided; Metacom/Philip has turned toward Nipmuc territory, and Weetamoo has traveled south to the Narragansetts.
August 2, 1675 – Edward Hutchinson and Thomas Wheeler lead militia, supported by Christian Indian scouts, into Nipmuc country. In a battle known as “Wheeler’s Surprise,” they are ambushed in brutal fighting, and retreat to Brookfield. Hutchinson is mortally wounded.
August 2-5, 1675 – The “seige of Brookfield,” in which Nipmuc fighters chasing Hutchinson and Wheeler destroy the frontier town of Brookfield. Most of the settlers survive by holing up in the tavern, which the attackers repeatedly fail to destroy by fire.
August 4, 1675 – Plymouth Colony magistrates order that around 100 Wampanoags, including women and children, who had surrendered near Dartmouth be sold into slavery. These are the first of an estimated one thousand Indians enslaved during the course of King Philip’s War.
August 22, 1675 – The Nipmuc sachem Monoco leads an attack on Lancaster, Massachusetts, killing seven colonists, including a four-year-old girl, an infant, and their parents. In the emotional aftermath, hostility to Christian Indians increases.
August 30, 1675 – To better separate friend from foe during King Philip’s War and in deference to settler demands that Christian Indians be policed, Massachusetts issues a comprehensive order to confine Christian Indians in five towns supervised by English officials. Colonists who encountered Christian Indians more than a mile from one of these towns without an English escort were authorized to kill them unless they surrendered on demand. This would make it almost impossible for Christian Indians to travel for work, or even to hunt and fish. Also on August 30, militia captain Samuel Mosely arrested James Printer and ten other Christian Indians, marching them bound together over 30 miles to Boston. They would be acquitted.
August 31, 1675 – Sir William Barkeley, governor of Virginia, commissions John Washington (grandfather of George) and Isaac Allerton, Jr. to lead a force against the Susquehannocks in northern Virginia, who had killed two Virginians and a few Marylanders to retaliate for the killing of 13 of their own in July.
September 1, 1675 – Wampanoags and Nipmucs attack Deerfield.
September 1, 1675 – John Washington and Isaac Allerton, Jr., now commissioned by Virginia to go after the Susquehannocks, send a letter to Maryland’s assembly asking for it to contribute troops. Maryland agrees quickly, on September 3.
September 4, 1675 – Wampanoags and Nipmucs attack Squakeag, and kill at least 20 English soldiers who rush to its defense.
September 9, 1675 – The leaders of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut meet in Boston and formally declare war on the Wampanoags and Nipmucs. They authorize the raising of militia in proportion to their respective populations.
September 12, 1675 – Wampanoags and Nipmucs attack Deerfield a second time. They captured a soldier, burned houses, “killed many horses and carried away horse loads of beef and pork.” John Pynchon of Springfield organizes a military response.
September 14, 1675 – Sir William Berkeley rebukes Nathanial Bacon for attacking friendly Appomattox Indians without good cause, calling it a “rash heady action,” that could only excite the nervous settlers and further alienate the friendly Indians.
September 18, 1675 – The “Battle of Bloody Brook”: During the relief of Deerfield during King Philip’s War, Algonquians ambush and destroy militia led by Captains Lathrop and Mosely. Lathrop dies, and the English leave more than 70 dead.
September 26-27, 1675 – Forces under John Washington, George Mason and Thomas Truman begin a seige of approximatley 500 Susquehannocks in a palisaded fort on Piscataway Creek in Maryland. The Susquehannocks would successfully defend the fort for more than six weeks, and then slip away while the colonists slept. A subsequent royal commission determined that this was a key catalyst of Bacon’s Rebellion.
October 5, 1675 – A large force of Nipmucs and Wampanoags almost completely destroy Springfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony, the largest town on the Connecticut River in that colony.
October 18, 1675 – Narragansett sachems and their representatives, under enormous pressure, signed a new treaty with Massachusetts and Plymouth, agreeing to surrender all Wampanoag and Nipmuc refugees within ten days. This they would, by and large, not do. Only Ninigret of the eastern Niantics would make the deadline.
October 19, 1675 – English militia finally win their first battle at Hatfield, temporarily boosting the morale of the colonies.
October 30, 1675 – Unable to distinguish friend and foe in King Philip’s War, the General Court ordered that the Christian Indians of Natick, already confined in their town and under English supervision, should be moved to Deer Island in Boston harbor, which sits about a mile and a half east of today’s Logan Airport. Over the next few months most Christian Indians in eastern Massachusetts would be relocated there.
November 12, 1675 – The commissioners of the United Colonies voted unanimously to send an expedition to force the Narragansetts to deliver “those of our enemies that are in their custody,” demand reparations, and secure hostages. This would turn out to be a mistake.
December 11, 1675 – The first part of the expeditionary force authorized by the United Colonies to subdue the Narragansetts arrives at Providence, R.I., and begins small-scale attacks on unfortified Narragansett villages in the area.
December 19, 1675 – The “Great Swamp Fight,” in which the English, having suffered grievous losses attempting to breach the palisades of a massive Narragansett fort, burn it down at great loss of life, including especially of the old folks, women, and children.
January 12, 1676 – Narragansett sachem Canonchet proposes a ceasefire for a month to discuss possible settlement of the war with the United Colonies. Josiah Winslow incorrectly sees the proposal as indicating Narragansett weakness, and rejects it.
January 25, 1676 – James Quanapohit, a Nashaway scout acting as a spy for Massachusetts, returns to Boston with disturbing news: The Narragansetts had not been allied with the Nipmucs and the Wampanoags until the United Colonies had attacked them. The English had expanded the war enormously by mistake.
January 25, 1676 – Susquehannocks launch simultaneous attacks on English plantations along the Rappahannock River, a measured retaliation for having been attacked and beseiged at their fort on Pisacataway Creek, in Maryland, from September – November 1675. They kill between 36 and 60 English settlers.
January 27 – February 3, 1676 – Josiah Winslow leads the forces of the United Colonies north from Rhode Island in pursuit of the Narragansetts, who have moved north to join with Nipmucs and Wampanoags fighting in Massachusetts. This is now known as “the hungry march,” and ended with Winslow disbanding his army.
February 10, 1676 – The Nipmuc sachem Monoco leads a combined force of Nipmucs, Wampanoags, and Narragansetts to attack Lancaster, Massachusetts. Mary Rowlandson, among others, is captured and taken away.
February 21, 1676 – Nipmuc sachem Monoco directs a devestating attack on Medfield, Massachusetts. The attackers leave a note, written in English, probably authored by the bilingual Christian Indian James Printer.
March 7, 1676 – Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, calls a session of the General Assembly to develop a response to the attacks by Susquehannocks in late January. It is the last meeting of the so-called “Long Assembly.” It votes to declare war on the Susquehannocks, disarm but remain close to allied Indians in the region, and build a series of defensive forts along Virginia’s frontier of settlement. The people of Virginia hate this plan, and soon after Nathaniel Bacon begins to agitate for a more aggressive response under his leadership.
March 26, 1676 – On New Year’s Day under the Old Style calendar, Indians launch attacks throughout the region. The most devestating is an ambush of the 80 men in Captain Michael Pierce’s Plymouth Company, 60 of whom are killed on the Blackstone River. Several of the survivors are tortured to death later in an episode known as the “Nine Men’s Misery.”
March 29, 1676 – Narragansetts destroy Providence, and Roger Williams makes his last meaningful appearance in history.
April 3, 1676 – Captain George Denison of Connecticut leading a force of 47 English militiamen and eighty allied eastern Niantic, Pequot, and Mohegan fighting men near Pawtucket, Rhode Island, capture Canonchet, the most important military commander of the Narragansetts. Canonchet is subsequently executed by the Mohegan leader Owaneco, who was the son of Uncas, who in turn had killed Canonchet’s father more than 30 years before.
April 1676 – Nathaniel Bacon meets with “volunteers” at Jordan’s Point on the James River, and agrees to assume command in a war against the Indians of the region, whether or not he receives a commision (authorization) from the governor. He leads them up to the falls of the James River, preparing to march on the Susquehannock camps along the Roanoke River in southern Virginia.
April 21, 1676 – Algonquians attack Sudbury, Massachusetts, and win a decisive victory over colonial militia in a confrontation known as “the Sudbury Fight.” It is one of the largest battles in King Philip’s War, and considered a victory for the Algonquians. It came, however, just as Algonquian fortunes were in permanent decline.
May 2, 1676 – Mary Rowlandson is ransomed from captivity after 82 days in the company of Metacom (King Philip) and Weetamoo.
May 2, 1676 – Sir William Berkeley, having raised men, pursues Nathaniel Bacon’s army up the James. He fails to find Bacon, but does receive a taunting message from him.
May 10, 1676 – The General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony orders that the Christian Indians confined on Deer Island in Boston harbor during King Philip’s War be released, thereby closing English North America’s first concentration camp.
May 10, 1676 – Virginia’s Governor Berkeley suspends Nathaniel Bacon from his council, and calls new general elections for the first time in 15 years, opening the franchise to all free men in Virginia. Election day will be May 25.
~May 10-16, 1676 – Nathaniel Bacon and his army are at the Occaneechee town on the Roanoke River, initially at the request of the Occaneechees, who have sought their help against nearby Susquehannocks. The Occaneechees attack a Susquehannock fort and kill most of them, only to be attacked in turn by Bacon’s army. Bacon and his army return to settled Virginia by May 18.
May 18, 1676 – Captain William Turner leads 150 men in an attack on an Algonquian encampment near today’s Montague, Massachusetts. The militia kill more than 100 Indians and others die going over waterfalls (now known as “Turner’s Falls”), but the ensuing counterattack killed 45 colonial militiamen, including Turner.
May 25, 1676 – Algonquians attack Hadley, Massachusetts Bay, and kill cattle and nine horses.
May 25, 1676 – Virginia holds its first general election for the Assembly in 15 years. Henrico County elects Nathaniel Bacon and James Crews as its representatives. The session of the new Assembly would open in Jamestown on June 5.
May 29, 1676 – Algonquians attack Hatfield, just across the Connecticut River from Hadley. They burn more than a dozen buildings and kill five men coming from Hadley to help.
June 6, 1676 – Benjamin Church attends a meeting of the Plymouth Colony General Court, which finally agrees to his suggestion that Plymouth should enlist Christian Indians to fight alongside its militia units.
June 6, 1676 – Nathaniel Bacon arrives in Jamestown with perhaps fifty “bodyguards.” His stated purpose is to take his seat in the Assembly. Governor Sir William Berkeley directs the fort’s guns to shoot at Bacon’s ship. Berkeley’s men capture Bacon on June 7 and put him in a cell in the statehouse.
June 8, 1676 – Overnight, Sir William Berkeley secured Nathaniel Bacon’s apology and confession, and opens the day’s proceedings of the Virginia Assembly by accepting Bacon’s confession. Berkeley permits Bacon to assume his seat, and over the next couple of days readmits Bacon to his council. Professions of loyalty notwithstanding, within a few days Bacon would slip out of Jamestown and return to Henrico County.
June 8, 1676 – Benjamin Church encounters Sakonnets in southern Rhode Island, and through one of them arranges a meeting with their sunksqua Awashonks on June 10. At that meeting, Awashonks agrees to ally herself with Plymouth, and places some of her fighting men under Church’s command.
June 12, 1676 – Algonquians again attack Hadley. To the great surprise of the locals, the fugitive William Goffe, one of the “judges” who had signed the death warrant of Charles I, emerges from hiding to rally the townsfolk to the defense of the town. He becomes known as the “Angel” or “ghost of Hadley,” and thereafter moves to Hartford where he lives under the pseudonym “T. Duffel” until the end of his days. The attacking Algonquians break it off after Mohawks attack them from the rear, but the English do not learn that until later.
June 16, 1676 – Wampanoags under King Philip attack Swansea, burning most of it to the ground. Then on June 26 they attack nearby Wannamoisett, inadvertently killing an old family friend of Philip and his father, Massasoit. Philip is much aggrieved.
June 23, 1676 – Nathaniel Bacon returns to Jamestown with hundreds of armed men, and holds the Assembly at gunpoint, demanding a commission to wage war on Indians in the region. Governor Berkeley confronts him, but the Assembly caves and gives Bacon a commission.
July 11, 1676 – Church, having finally obtained the required permission to join the fight with his Sakonnet allies, marches to Middleborough. Along the way, the Sakonnets teach him an entirely new way of fighting, tactics that are still used in American counterinsurgency today. It is during this campaign that he earns recognition as America’s “first ranger.” That may not be entirely fair, insofar as he learned these tactics from the Sakonnet commander, Nompash, who was, for sure, also American.
July 24, 1676 – Josiah Winslow of Plymouth grants Benjamin Church the formal authority to offer clemency to Algonquians who surrender and switch sides, a tactic that Church had already been using to great effect.
July 29-30, 1676 – Nathaniel Bacon, having assembled his army at the falls of the James River, gets word that Governor Berkeley is raising his own army in Gloucester County, Virginia. Bacon marches east, arriving at Middle Plantation (today’s Williamsburg) on July 29. On July 30, he issues his “Declaration” and “Manifesto.”
August 1, 1676 – Church and his allies have their first direct encounter with Metacom, who narrowly escapes. They would again miss him in another close encounter on August 3.
August 6, 1676 – English militia capture and kill Weetamoo’s followers near Taunton. Weetamoo’s body is found a couple of days later.
August 11, 1676 – Benjamin Church, visiting Newport, learns that Philip/Metacom has returned to his original seat on Mount Hope, and is camped in a little high land surrounded by a swamp. He and local volunteers and Indian allies set out immediately in pursuit.
August 12, 1676 – Church leads a stealthy attack on Philip’s encampment. This time he does not escape. He is shot by an allied Indian named Alderman, fulfilling the prophecy of Philip’s powwows that he would not die at the hands of an Englishman. This is considered the end of King Philip’s War outside of Maine, even though mopping up operations would continue for a few weeks.
September 4, 1676 – In the waning days of King Philip’s war, four colonial soldiers go on trial in Boston for murdering six women and children, relatives of Christian Indian Captain Andrew Pittimee. Unlike previous such trials during the war, they are convicted. It is an early sign that New England is recovering from war panic.
September 7, 1676 – During Bacon’s Rebellion, Governor Sir William Berkeley, who has assembled a fleet of between 10 and 17 ships of various sizes, arrives off Jamestown to retake it from rebels loyal to Nathaniel Bacon. The rebels flee that night, and Berkeley regains his capital on September 8.
September 13, 1676 – Nathaniel Bacon and a force of his “Volunteers” arrives at Jamestown by land, intent on retaking it. Governor Berkeley has erected a stout palisade across the neck of the peninsula, so Bacon begins a siege.
September 18-19, 1676 – Faced with flagging morale and almost mutinous officers, Sir William Berkeley retreats from Jamestown a second time, and Nathaniel Bacon enters the town. He orders it burned to the ground that night. Berkeley watches it burn from the deck of one of his ships in the James River.
September 26, 1676 – Sir William Berkeley, while heading back to the Eastern Shore to plot the next stage of the war against Nathaniel Bacon, meets the first of several armed merchant ships, the captains of which pledge their service to Berkeley.
October 1, 1676 – Charles II meets with his Cabinet Council to sort through what Crown officials know about Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia. His Majesty ends up ordering that 1000 soldiers and a royal commission be sent to Virginia to suppress the rebellion and investigate why it happened and how it was handled.
October 26, 1676 – Nathaniel Bacon dies of the “bloody flux,” the beginning of the end for his eponymous rebellion. Joseph Ingram assumes command of the rebellion.
October 27, 1676 – Charles II, in London, after finally hearing Governor Berkeley’s side of the story, declares Nathaniel Bacon “in a traitorous and rebellious manner levied war … against the King’s most Excellent Majesty.”
November 7, 1676 – Robert Beverley, leading a loyalist raid on the rebel position at Tindall’s Point at the mouth of the York River (across from today’s Yorktown), surprises Thomas Hansford and his garrison. This is the first of several successful raids by Beverley that help turn the tide of the war.
November 21, 1676 – The 500 ton, 32 gun Concord under the command of Thomas Grantham arrives at the mouth of the York River. Grantham pledges his service to Governor Berkeley, and through diplomacy goes on to secure the surrender of most of the rebellion’s forces along the York.
December 25, 1676 – The loyalist Captain John Consett landed on the South Side of the James. In a series of attacks over the next three days Consett rolled up the rebels on that shore, taking Bacon’s Castle on December 28.
January 2, 1677 – Thomas Grantham secures the surrender of Joseph Ingram’s force of 300 men at West Point, Virginia. He gives them a barrel of brandy to drink while he marches off to the “brick house” headquarters of the rebellion. Grantham obtains the surrender of another 400 men and the main rebel arsenal over the next days.
January 11-24, 1677 – Sir William Berkeley prosecutes leading rebel officers over two weeks, executing most of them. Richard Lawrence, however, escapes, and his fate remains unknown.
January 29, 1677 – The English warship Bristol, carrying seventy “red coats” – English regular infantry – under the command of Sir John Berry, arrived at the mouth of the James River. Berry and one of his passengers, Francis Moryson, were two of three royal commissioners dispatched by Charles II to put down Bacon’s Rebellion and find out what had caused it. Berry and Moryson summon Governor Sir William Berkeley to meet with them, and Berkeley arrives at their ship on January 31.
February 8, 1677 – The royal commissioners Sir John Berry and Francis Moryson wrote Governor Berkeley urging him to publish the King’s proclamation pardoning the people who had joined Nathaniel Bacon in rebellion in Virginia. Berkeley has been stalling, because he believes the loyalists, who won the war, should be able to recover assets looted by Bacon’s men. This is the earliest indication in the documents of growing conflict between Berkeley and the commissioners.
February 11, 1677 – Colonel Herbert Jeffreys, ten ships and almost a thousand English regular infantry arrive at the mouth of the James. Jeffreys is the third royal commissioner sent to suppress Bacon’s Rebellion – already done – and investigate the causes of the war. He is also commissioned to succeed Sir William Berkeley, who has been called back to England.
February 20, 1677 – The newly elected Assembly of Virginia gathers in session at Sir William Berkeley’s Green Spring Plantation. Among other things, the Assembly passes bills allowing for the recovery of assets from Bacon’s surving rebels, in defiance of the royal commissioners (whose authority was ambiguous).
April 22, 1677 – Royal commissioners Sir John Berry and Francis Moryson call on Sir William Berkeley, who has finally decided to return to Virginia. Their intent is to pay their respects notwithstanding the disagreements between them, but Berkeley supplies them with a carriage driven by the local hangman, which the commissioners take as an unpardonable insult.
April 27, 1677 – Colonel Herbert Jeffreys, tired of waiting for William Berkeley to leave Virginia, declares himself “governor” in the wake of the hangman incident, humiliating Berkeley.
July 9, 1677 – Sir William Berkeley, loyal servant of the Stuarts, governor of Virginia, and proprietor of Carolina and New Jersey, died in England, shortly after his final return from Virginia.
May 3, 1680 – Thomas, Lord Culpeper, Governor of Virginia Colony since the death of Sir William Berkeley on July 9, 1677, finally arrives in Virginia. During the interim the colony has been administrated by a series of deputy governors.
February 20, 1681 – Charles II grants the proprietary charter for Pennsylvania to William Penn.
January 18, 1718 – Benjamin Church, the “first ranger,” dies in Little Compton, Rhode Island.
September 30, 1768 – A British fleet sailed into Boston harbor, decks cleared for battle and guns trained on the city. They disembarked two regiments of Regulars in their red coats and marched them into town.
March 5, 1770 – After months of bloodless confrontations, British soldiers on the Boston Common fire at an advancing crowd. This is now known as the “Boston Massacre.”
December 17, 1773 – Paul Revere rides to New York and Philadelphia to deliver a brief written by Whigs in Massachusetts defending the Boston “Tea Party.”
May 13, 1774 – General Thomas Gage arrives in Boston, and honored by the locals at a dinner at Faneuil Hall. Things would go down hill from there.
September 1-2 1774 – The first “Powder Alarm,” in which British troops secure (or capture, depending on your POV) the powder and munitions of Massachusetts Bay at an arsenal six miles north of Boston. Rumors of war spread rapidly through New England, and many thousands of militia march on Boston. Whig leaders diffuse the crisis.
December 13, 1774 – Paul Revere rides to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to warn local Whigs that a British force is sailing there to secure its arsenal. The locals quickly muster 400 militia, who swarm the British stronghold (without bloodshed) and confiscate the munitions.
February 27, 1775 – The British march on Salem to secure naval artillery that was being converted for use on land by the forge in that town. Militia from many miles around muster and block the British advance, again with no bloodshed.
March 5, 1775 – A service at Old South Meetinghouse in memory of the Boston Massacre almost ends in bloodshed between townsmen and British soldiers present, largely over the misunderstanding of an insult.
April 8, 1775 – Whig leaders, hearing intelligence that Thomas Gage would soon receive orders to arrest them, leave Boston to take refuge elsewhere. Among the big names, only Joseph Warren and Paul Revere stay behind.
April 16, 1775 – Learning of a British plan to march out of Boston to seize munitions stored in the area of Concord, Massachusetts, Paul Revere rides there to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who are taking refuge, and to discuss plans for the rapid mobilization of militia if the British do march.
April 18, 1775 – During the afternoon, Paul Revere arranges for a system of lantern signals at the top of Old North Church to alert Charlestown of the means by which the British will leave Boston.
April 18-19, 1775 – The “midnight ride” of Paul Revere.
May 10, 1775 – Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont, with an assist from Colonel Benedict Arnold and militiamen from Connecticut, capture Fort Ticonderoga without bloodshed. Later that year, Henry Knox would arrive to retrieve its functioning artillery and take it to Boston.
June 17, 1775 – The Battle of Bunker Hill, in which the British win a tactical victory at the price of very high casualties, more than twice the American losses.
July 3, 1775 – George Washington arrived at Cambridge to assume command of the Continental Army, such as it was, beseiging occupied Boston. On July 5, Henry Knox met him on the road, and Washington took an immediately liking to him.
October 23, 1775 – George Washington received a letter from the Continental Congress authorizing him to retrieve the big guns at Fort Ticonderoga captured by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold. His generals are opposed to trying to do it because of the great difficult, but Henry Knox persuades him it is possible.
November 16, 1775 – George Washington gives Henry Knox orders to take a detachment of militia and retrieve the cannons at Fort Ticonderoga, 300 miles through the wilderness away. Knox and his expedition leave on horseback the next day, their first destination New York City. They arrived at Manhattan on November 26, having been delayed by a blizzard in Massachusetts.
November 28 – December 1, 1775 – The Knox expedition leaves New York City and travels to Albany. After making arrangements for the construction of sleds and the hiring of teamsters to haul the artillery to be retrieved, Knox and his men depart for the southern end of Lake George on December 3.
December 5, 1775 – The Knox expedition, having hired 45 boats big enough to carry artillery, sails the length of Lake George, down the La Chute River, and arrives at Ticonderoga around 5:30 pm.
December 9, 1775 – Having loaded the big guns, barrels of flint, and boxes of lead at Ticonderoga, the Knox expedition begins the arduous return voyage to Fort George, where it will rendezvous with almost 200 draft animals, sleds, and teamsters. The lead boats will arrive on December 11, but many will straggle in over the next few days.
December 17, 1775 – Henry Knox, still at Fort George, writes to General George Washington that he has secured “a noble train of artillery.” His forecast for delivery at Cambridge proves to be optimistic.
January 2, 1776 – The Knox expedition and the “noble train” of artillery leave Fort George, first destination Albany. They would arrive on January 5, having crossed the Hudson at Glens Falls and the Mohawk River at Half Moon, New York.
January 7, 1776 – The first attempt of the Knox expedition to cross the Hudson at Albany fails, with the heaviest cannon falling through the ice. The citizens of Albany turn out en masse to help recover it. The temperature turns very cold, and on January 8 the Noble Train crosses the Hudson safely.
January 11-13, 1776 – The Knox expedition crosses the Berkshires, working nonstop for 48 hours.
January 24, 1776 – Having been halted around Springfield for lack of snow, the Knox expedition finally reaches Framingham, Massachusetts, now less than 20 miles from Cambridge. Henry Knox gallops ahead, and reports directly to George Washington that he has 59 guns following behind.