References and Topics

Secondary. Ashe, No. Carolina, I. chs. v-xvii.

71

Bassett, U. S., ch.

v. Bruce, Oglethorpe. Channing, U. S., II. chs. i-vii, xii. Fiske, Beginnings of New Engl., 199–278; Dutch and Quaker Cols., I. 243-294, II. 1-61, 99-208; Old Va., II. 45-116, 131-162, 270-308, 333–336. — Mathews, Expansion of New Engl., ch. iii. — McCrady, So. Carolina, I, II. chs. i-v. Sharpless, Quaker Experiment. Wendell, Cotton Mather, 21-87. - Wertenbaker, Va. under the Stuarts, chs. v-viii.

Sources. Am. History Leaflets, no. 16. Bogart and Thompson, Readings, 11-20. - Hart, Contemporaries, I. §§ 42, 43, 54, 70, 71, 76–81, 104, 116, 121–126, 132–136, 155-157, 160-167, 172, II. §§ 39-44; Patriots and Statesmen, I. 116–126, 134–147, 183-186; Source Book, §§ 22-27. Jameson, Original Narratives. - MacDonald, Select Charters, nos. 24-49, passim. Old South Leaflets, nos. 21, 22, 88, 95, 155, 171, 172. - See New Engl. Hist. Teachers' Assoc., Hist. Sources, §§ 70-72; Syllabus, 301, 310, 313.

Illustrative.

Bynner,

Cooper,

Goodwin,

Butterworth, Wampum Belt (Penn.). Begum's Daughter (Leisler). - Catherwood, Story of Tonty. Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish (Philip); Water Witch (N.Y.). White Aprons (Bacon). — Green, Young Pioneers (La Salle). Hawthorne, Gray Champion (Andros); Grandfather's Chair, pt. i, chs. viii, ix. — Johnston, Prisoners of Hope (Bacon). - Kennedy, Rob of the Bowl (Md.). — Seton, Charter Oak. (S.C.). Whittier, Pa. Pilgrim.

Pictures. Avery, U.S., II, III.

America, III, IV.

- Simms, Cassique of Kiawah Wilkins, Heart's Highway (Va.). Wilson, Am. People, I. — Winsor,

Topics Answerable from the References Above

(1) Life in New Amsterdam about 1660. [§ 40] (2) Early life in New Jersey. [§ 41] — (3) History of "The Duke's Laws." [§ 42] (4) Why did Locke's "Fundamental Constitution" fail? [§ 44] (5) Early slavery in South Carolina. [§ 44] — (6) Life of William Penn, down to 1681. [§ 45] — (7) Plans of James Oglethorpe. [§ 46] — (8) Hudson's Bay Company to 1750. [§ 47]-(9) The Spanish "plate fleet." [§ 47]

Topics for Further Search

(10) Story of the early British East India Company. [§ 40](11) How were the charters obtained for Connecticut and Rhode Island? [§ 41] — (12) Were the Acts of Trade a good thing for the colonies? [§ 43] — (13) Was Sir Edmund Andros a tyrant? [§ 43]· (14) Was Nathaniel Bacon a patriot? [§ 44] — (15) Boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland. [§ 45] — (16) Board of Trade. [§ 46] – (17) German and Moravian colonists in Georgia. [§ 46]

CHAPTER V

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE (1689-1763)

49. COLONIAL POPULATION

WE are interested nowadays in the development of the English colonies, because we know that they finally came together in the federal Union under which we live. The colonists themselves were not much interested in their own history. They lived like their descendants, from one day to another:

going to church-some of them going to prison, - building, working, traveling, fighting, marrying, and dying.

Everywhere the population grew rapidly. Though New England received hardly any direct immigration after the beginning of the English civil war (§ 37), by 1700 it had about 105,000 inhabitants. The southern colonies (Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas) together had about 110,000; the middle col

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onies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware), 55,000; making a total of about 270,000 people. The largest towns were Boston, with about 7000 people, and Philadelphia, with 4000. By 1763, the population had grown to about 1,770,000, of which the New England group contained about 510,000, the middle group 460,000, and the southern group (including Georgia in addition to the earlier southern colonies) about 800,000. Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, the only large towns down to 1763, varied from 15,000 to 20,000 people each.

Many races combined to make up this population, but it is now impossible to know how many there were of each, except in the case of the negroes. In every colony the largest element was of English descent. There may have been 25,000 descendants of Dutchmen in New York and on the Delaware in 1700. A few Swedes and Finns (§ 27) still remained on that river, and a small Swedish immigration continued there. A few Huguenots could be found in almost all the colonies, and they were numerous in South Carolina. The negroes in 1700 were about 46,000, and in 1763 had increased to perhaps 300,000. The Indians had nowhere fused with the white population, and were not considered members of the community.

The two most important non-English races were the Germans and the Protestant Scotch-Irish, to whom may be added some Catholic Irish and some Scotch Highlanders. The Germans nearly all of them Protestants came mostly from

the Rhine region, with a few from Austria; most of them lived in Pennsylvania, a few in Maryland, Georgia, and central New York. They are supposed to have been about 100,000 in number in 1763. The Scotch-Irish were about 125,000, and most of them lived in Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, and Georgia.

50. COLONIAL HOME LIFE

The greater part of the colonists lived in easily constructed log houses. In New England there were many frame buildings,

clapboarded or shingled. In the towns and in the Dutch and German villages, there were more substantial houses of brick. Among the poor families, the rude furniture was hardly more than floor, seats, and tables, all made of "puncheons," that is, of split halves of small

tree trunks, with a few pewter dishes, a fireplace, and its utensils. The better houses had substantial oaken chests, chairs, and tables, and handsome clocks.

In dress our well-to-do forefathers followed as closely as they could the English fashions of elaborate suits of cloth or velvet or silk, and full-bottomed wigs. The most common materials were homespun linen and woolen, though on the frontier deer-skin was used.

Food abounded: game wandered in and out of all the

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settlements, shellfish were abundant, and the New England coast fisheries provided a regular supply of salt fish ; Indian corn was grown everywhere, and there was plenty of wheat flour.

The colonies were swept by diseases, chiefly due to ignorance and uncleanliness, such as "ship-fever," "small pocks," "yellow fever," "break-bone fever," "fever and ague," and other varieties of malaria; and medical practice was lamentably unskillful.

51. COLONIAL EDUCATION

Though England was a land with numerous town schools and several world-famous universities, some of the colonies in America, broken up into separate and widely distributed plantations, could not maintain many schools. Governor Berkeley reported (1671) for Virginia: "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects in the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both." The New England towns established the first schools in northeastern America, though closely followed by the Collegiate School of the Dutch Reformed Church in New Amsterdam (1633). The colony of Massachusetts Bay showed its interest in education by requiring that every town of fifty families should maintain a school, and every town of a hundred families, a grammar school (that is, a Latin school); but the towns too frequently avoided the responsibility if they could, and no public education was provided for the girls. In 1689 the Penn Charter School was founded in Philadelphia.

Three small colleges provided higher education for the colonies. Harvard College, named from the Rev. John Harvard, its earliest private benefactor, was founded (1636) “to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity." From the beginning it trained the ministers, and also had as students future men of affairs and statesmen. William and Mary College was es