EQ: How did the colonies come to be created?

The Chartering Of Carolina and the Colonies

How Did the Process Begin?In the beginning, every one of GB’s colonies

was organized by a charter. A charter is a contract granted by the king to

individuals or a group or groups that want to be in charge of settlement and then govern themselves.

The London Company was granted a charter and they set up the colony of Jamestown and intended to make a financial profit.

Despite the popularity of tobacco, Jamestown was not a financial success and the company sold its rights back to the king in 1622.

How Did England’s Civil Conflict Affect the Colonies?

Charles II had set up the new Carolina Colony in 1663 after his father Charles I had been executed in England during the Glorious Rebellion in 1660.

Charles II had to repay personal favors to those wealthy aristocrats that put him back into power.

So he granted them the southern half of Virginia which at that time included what is today, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and part of Florida.

No one at the time knew just how large the charter was.

It stretched as far west as the Pacific Ocean.

Who Were the Lord Proprietors?March 24, 1663 eight recipients were granted

the charter and called “Lords” because they were meant to be the absolute masters of the colony.

Some of these men were among the most powerful and influential in England.

George Monck was the Duke of Albemarle and he is who the Albemarle Sound is named after.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper was the national treasurer in England and the two rivers that fed into the sound were named for him.

So in Charles Town, where the Ashley and Cooper Rivers met became the site the great harbor was built.

Why Would These Men Want to Build a Colony?

Money, of course, these men had no intensions of leaving England and living in the colonies.

They wanted settlers to move and develop the area and basically gave the land away.

The Proprietors expected to receive a quit-rent from the land owners which was basically a form of a land tax.

With this in place, England was liable to protect the colonists from attack from Natives, Spaniards, and any other challenge from Europe.

So at the surface it looked like a win-win for all involved.

How different were the two regions?

The Albemarle Sound was not nearly as profitable because the region was not very assessable for ships.

Plus Durant did not have a high opinion about aristocrats and did all he could to lessen the profitability of the colony.

Charles Town was the real money maker.They made a fortune growing rice and

shipping it back to England.This encouraged further development

because of the ease that ships could enter in and out of Chares Town.

Why Were the Albemarlers Called “Lubbers”?

William Byrd, wealthy Virginia planter had an opinion that smart men made their wives mind the fields and the children while they “snored.”

The Albemarle inhabitants did most if not all the work themselves without slaves or other laborers.

They did not make much progress with such few numbers.

They were viewed as lazy by the wealthier Virginia planters.

The name “Lubbers” was meant to be an insult.

Who Were the Quakers? The Quakers came from England for

religious freedom.They called themselves “The Society of

Friends”. They migrated from Pennsylvania and

started setting up “friendship meetings” which were houses where they could practice their faith.

In these “meetings” you have no preacher or priest to lead the congregation.

It was a shocking departure for many who were used to traditional services.

What Was the Effect on Carolina?

There would be no meeting houses built in Carolina until after 1700.

So there was not a stabilizing force like a traditional church.

People worshipped in their homes.The absence of a church did not give the

settlers a sense of a neighborhood or a community.

It helped settlers to make up their own minds about religion.

In England, the King ran the Church of England.

What Were the Other Colonies Reasons for

Settlement? The Massachusetts Bay Colony was settled

in 1620 and made an English colony in 1630 and was settled for religious freedom.

A colony in Connecticut was settled in 1633 for religious freedom and agriculture and made an English Colony in 1636.

Rhode Island settled in 1636 and made an English colony in 1644 for religious freedom.

New Hampshire in 1623 and made a colony in 1679 for a commercial venture.

What of the “Middle Colonies”?

New York and New Jersey were settled in 1626 and made into English colonies in 1664 for trade and agriculture.

Pennsylvania was settled in 1642 by Richard Fox and the Quakers and made a colony in 1681 for religious freedom.

Delaware was settled in 1638 and made into an English colony in 1701 for trade reasons having a good shipping port.

What of the Southern Colonies?

Virginia (the Jamestown Colony) was the first to be settled in 1607 and made into an English Colony the same year and was strictly a commercial venture.

Maryland settled in 1634 but was created an English Colony in 1632. This was meant to serve as a buffer against the Dutch that had originally settled in New York but there were elements of religious freedom too.

North (1650’s) and South Carolina (1669)were made into English colonies (1712) (1729) for agriculture.

What of Georgia?This was the last of the original 13 and was

set up as a debtors colony.A debtor is someone sent to prison because

they were unable or unwilling to pay their bills.

The English had another motive to have Georgia as a military buffer from the Spanish in Florida.

James Oglethorpe created the town of Savannah and wanted the citizens to be hardworking, independent, and Protestant.

He banned rum, Catholics, and slavery.

How Did This Go Over?Georgia received few debtors but many

poor Germans, Jews, and Switzerland immigrants.

Georgia had a higher concentration of non-British than British.

They complained about Oglethorpe’s rules and demanded more freedom.

He eventually allowed slave ownership and rum.

In 1751 he was so frustrated that he gave up all rights to Georgia back to the King of England.