Chronological Activity: The Birth of a Nation

[1] In 1606, King James I gave half of the Atlantic coast to the London Company and half to the Plymouth Company. His actions would ultimately pave the way for the birth of the United States of America.
[2] The first settlement in North America had actually been established 20 years before on Roanoke Island. Mysteriously, by 1590, the Roanoke Colony vanished, and nobody knows what happened to them.
[3] In 1606, just a few months after James I issued the charters, the London Company sent 144 men to Virginia, and they settled at Jamestown. They were so busy looking for gold they could barely feed themselves. It was not until 1616, when they learned to grow tobacco it seemed they might survive. With a sustainable industry started, the first women and the first slaves began to arrive in 1619.
[4] Soon after, the first settlers came to New England in 1620, and in 1632, a colony named Maryland, after the queen, was established. Ten years later, more settlers arrived and established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colonies of Rhode Island and New Hampshire were in place by 1664, and Connecticut became a colony the next year.
[5] In 1680, William Penn established the colony of Pennsylvania and the Carolinas were colonies beginning in the 1690’s. In 1732 with King James’ permission, James Oglethorpe established Georgia as a debtors’ colony. The Spanish settled Florida in 1513, but it didn’t become a British colony until 1763.
[6] By the year 1700, there were about 250.000 settlers in North America’s 13 colonies. Seventy-five years later, the population had surged to almost 2.5 million. While these colonists did not have much in common, they were able to band together and fight for their independence from the British government, thus formally establishing the United States of America as its own nation.

Create a timeline of events on a scratch piece of paper or sticky by referring to the paragraph above.