America 1607-1775 : Protestant and English/Northern European Is Who They Were

1607 -- the first English colony, Jamestown, Virginia, learned to grow tobacco profitably, created plantations along Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and Maryland, and began the first and longest era of American immigration, lasting until the American Revolution in 1775. Isolated English outposts became British America, attracting northern European immigrants -- almost all British, German, and Dutch Protestants. The British were by far the largest group. Many young men and women, especially in the South, arrived as indentured servants, their passage paid by colonial employers who needed farm or shop workers -- they received food, housing, clothing and training but not wages. At the end of the indenture (age 21), they were free to marry and start their own farms on the first frontier. ~~~~~ Religious freedom, especially for Protestant sects who objected to the English Anglican Church, was a driving force for organized group immigration to the New World. One hundred English Pilgrims established the now-famous Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1620. At the peak of New England settlement, 20,000 English Puritans, mostly from southeast England, settled in and around Boston, Massachusetts from 1629 to 1641, creating a land dedicated to their religion. Large scale immigration to the earliest New England colonies -- Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire -- ended before 1700. But, for the next 150 years, their "Yankee" English descendants populated New England states and upstate New York. They were more urban and educated than other colonists, with many skilled farmers, tradesmen and craftsmen. They started the first university, Harvard, in 1635 to train their ministers. They settled in small villages for mutual support (with their own militias) and common religious lifestyles. Shipbuilding, commerce, agriculture, and fishing were their main income sources. ~~~~~ New England's healthy climate (cold winters killed mosquitoes and other disease-bearing insects, unlike southern colonies weakened by malaria and yellow fever), small separated villages (minimizing contagion), and abundant food supply led to the lowest death rate and highest birth rate in the colonies. New England grew rapidly, reaching a population of 900,000 by 1790. Importantly, these New Englanders, with Virginians and Pennsylvanians, became the intellectual, financial and military backbone of the American Revolution. ~~~~~ The eastern and northern frontier around the first New England colonies was settled by descendants of original New Englanders, and by Dutch, who built settlements along the Hudson River in New York after 1626. Wealthy Dutch patroons set up large estates and brought in rent-paying farmers. Others became rich by creating trading posts to trade with Native Americans. The Dutch also started cities such as New Amsterdam (later New York City). After the British acquired and renamed the colony New York, Germans and Yankees arrived. ~~~~~ Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware were the middle colonies. Pennsylvania was settled by British Quakers and German Protestants, and later, Scots-Irish Presbyterians on the frontier, who soon dominated the Appalachians from Pennsylvania to Georgia. From 1680 to 1725, Pennsylvania's commercial center, Philadelphia, was run by prosperous Quakers and Germans. After Pennsylvania was founded in 1680, many settlers arrived in the middle colonies. Protestant sects were offered religious freedom and good, cheap land. ~~~~~ Dear readers, pre-1775 American colonies were British by language, culture, law, economy and religion -- financed privately by British settlers or families using free enterprise to entice settlers, without Royal or Parliamentary help. "That's not who we are" didn't exist. Immigration was northern European, Protestant and often contractual. Except for Canadians, few just wandered in. Nearly all Americans were at least third generation natives. Of the 3,900,000 Americans, 2,560,000 (66%) were English. Immigation was over. Tomorrow, we'll look at the 19th century.