Founding and Expansion of the English Mainland Colonies

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the key terms, entities, social concepts, and historical developments from the settlement and development of the British American mainland colonies.

Mayflower Compact

An agreement drafted in 1620 when the Pilgrims reached America that granted political rights to any man willing to remain and abide by whatever law the new colony enacted.

Squanto

A Patuxet Indian who helped the Plymouth colonists survive by teaching them to plant corn, squash, and pumpkins, and assisted William Bradford in negotiating a peace treaty with Massasoit.

John Winthrop

A 41-year-old Puritan lawyer and landowner who led the Massachusetts Bay Company, served as governor, and envisioned the colony as a model Christian 'city upon a hill.'

Great Migration

The movement of thousands of English Puritans to Massachusetts during the 1630s due to religious tensions and economic distress in England, which continued until Oliver Cromwell's Puritan army took control of England.

Hiving off

A process in Puritan New England where settlers on the outer rim of a town established a new community as population grew and farmland became too far from the central village green.

Coverture

A medieval English legal doctrine under which a married woman lost her legal identity (as a femme couverte) and came under the legal protection and governance of her husband, restricting her legal rights to property, contracts, and wages.

Hierarchy

A system in which people or things are ranked above one another.

Egalitarian

Believing in human equality.

Sainthood

Full membership in a Puritan church, granted only after a person testified to an experience of 'saving grace' demonstrating personal salvation.

Quakers

Members of the Society of Friends, a radical Protestant sect that believed in pacifism, the equality of men and women, and the presence of a divine 'inner light' in every individual.

Heretic

A person who does not behave in accordance with an established attitude, doctrine, or principle, usually in religious matters.

Roger Williams

A Puritan minister banished from Massachusetts in 1635 for criticizing its religious rules and Indian policies, who subsequently founded Providence and established Rhode Island on the principles of religious freedom and separation of church and state.

Anne Hutchinson

A well-educated religious leader banished from Massachusetts in 1636 after being tried as a heretic for criticizing colonial government policies and ministers.

Pequot War

A 1636 conflict in which colonists from Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut, along with Narragansett and Mohican allies, destroyed the Pequot Indians of eastern Connecticut.

Metacomet

A Wampanoag chief, known to the English as King Philip, who led Indian armed resistance against colonial expansion in New England during King Philip's War in 1675.

Jacob Leisler

A German merchant who led a revolt in New York in 1689 against royal officials representing the Dominion of New England and was executed for treason after refusing to surrender control to a newly appointed royal governor.

Proprietor

A wealthy Englishman in colonial America who received a large grant of land directly from the king or queen to create a new colony.

William Penn

An English Quaker who received a royal charter west of the Delaware River in 1681 and founded Pennsylvania as a refuge based on Quaker religious principles.

Presbyterians

Members of a Protestant sect that eventually became the established church of Scotland, who faced persecution in Scotland during the seventeenth century.

Quitrent

A small fee set by colonial proprietors on all land purchased within their colony.

Yeoman

An independent landowner entitled to suffrage.

James Oglethorpe

An English philanthropist and social reformer who established the colony of Georgia in 1732 as a refuge for imprisoned debtors.

Joint-stock company

A business enterprise financed through the sale of shares of stock to investors who share in both the profits and losses of a risky venture.

Head right system

A land grant system that awarded 50 acres of land to a colonist for each settler whose passage to the colony they financed.

House of Burgesses

The elected lawmaking body of Virginia, established by the Virginia Company in 1618 and first meeting in 1619, which gave tobacco-planting landholders control over local political matters.

Staple crop

A basic or necessary agricultural item produced specifically for sale or export, such as tobacco in the Chesapeake.

Tidewater

Low coastal land drained by tidal streams in Maryland and Virginia.

Indentured servants

Laborers who agreed to compulsory service for a fixed term (usually 4 to 7 years) under a written contract in exchange for passage across the Atlantic to the colonies.

Demographic disaster

The severe population decline and social disruption in the 17th-century Chesapeake resulting from high mortality rates from disease and an extremely unbalanced gender ratio.

Separatists

English Protestants who withdrew entirely from the Church of England because they believed it was fundamentally corrupt.

Pilgrims

A small group of Separatists who fled England in search of religious freedom and sailed to North America aboard the Mayflower in 1620.

William Bradford

The Separatist leader who led the Pilgrims to North America on the Mayflower and served as the first governor of Plymouth Colony.

John Coode

A minister and leader of the Protestant Association who led a rebel army that seized control of Maryland in 1691 and persuaded the Crown to make it a royal colony.

Stono Rebellion

A 1739 slave revolt in South Carolina led by an African named Jemmy, which resulted in the deaths of white colonists and rebels and prompted harsher laws governing enslaved people.

Paxton Boys

A vigilante group of Scots-Irish frontier settlers in Paxton, Pennsylvania, who murdered peaceful Conestoga Indians in 1763 and marched on Philadelphia to demand stronger government military protection.

Regulators

Frontier settlers in the Carolinas during the 1760s and 1770s who organized to protest corrupt local officials and the lack of government services in the backcountry.

Enlightenment

An eighteenth-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason and rational thinking as the path to human knowledge and progress rather than divine revelation or tradition.

Deism

An Enlightenment religious philosophy holding that God created the universe to operate according to natural, logical laws without subsequent divine intervention or miracles.

Social contract

A political theory articulated by John Locke stating that citizens consent to surrender absolute freedom to a government in exchange for the protection of their natural rights to life, liberty, and property.

Great Awakening

A series of passionate religious revivals driven by charismatic itinerant preaching that swept through the American colonies during the second quarter of the eighteenth century.

George Whitefield

A charismatic English evangelical preacher whose energetic preaching tours across the American colonies in 1740 catalyzed the Great Awakening.

Salutary neglect

The unofficial British policy of relaxed enforcement of colonial trade regulations as long as the colonies remained profitable and loyal to the Crown.

Power of the purse

The political power held by an elected legislative assembly through its control over taxation and the allocation of government funds, including executive salaries.