1600-1754: Business and Communications: Chronology

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1600-1754

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1600-1754

1603

• The king of France grants a ten-year monopoly on the fur trade in eastern Canada to Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts.

1606

• King James I charters two profit-seeking Virginia companies.

1612

• John Rolfe plants his first successful crop of tobacco in Virginia.

1613

• Dutch fur traders first arrive on the island of Manhattan.

1617

• English convicts are sent to Virginia as indentured servants.

1619

• Virginia planters export tobacco, and it quickly becomes a medium of exchange in the colony.
• The first Africans arrive in Jamestown, Virginia.

1620

• A tobacco boom begins in the Chesapeake colonies.

1624

• Edward Winslow, later governor of Plymouth Colony, introduces cattle to New England by importing one bull and three heifers from Devon, England.
• The English Crown takes control of Virginia.

1626

• In exchange for goods worth sixty guilders (twenty-four dollars), the Dutchman Peter Minuit purchases Manhattan Island from local Indians.

1632

• Lord Baltimore receives a land grant for the first proprietary colony in British North America; he names it Maryland.

1640

• New England merchants enter the slave trade.
• The Five Nations of the Iroquois confederacy begin to wage war with neighboring tribes over control of the fur trade.

1641

• The first patent in the colonies is awarded to Samuel Winslow for a process used in manufacturing salt.

1642

• Joseph Jencks, a skilled English ironmaker, arrives in Lynn, Massachusetts, to establish an iron-and-brass works.

1643

• The first American textile factory, a small woolen mill, is established at Rowley, Massachusetts.

1644

• The first successful ironworks is founded on the Saugus River, near Lynn, Massachusetts.

1646

• Joseph Jencks receives a Massachusetts patent for a scythe-grinding machine.

1651

• Parliament begins to enact a series of navigation laws to regulate colonial commerce, industry, and shipping.

1654

• The Massachusetts General Court licenses Richard Thurley to build and maintain a toll bridge over the Newbury River at Rowley. It is the first of its kind in the colonies and charges two shillings for horses, cows, and oxen; one-half shilling for hogs, sheep, and goats; and no fee for humans.

1661

• A Maryland law makes slavery hereditary.

1662

• A Virginia law makes slavery hereditary.

1664

• King Charles II assigns his brother, James, Duke of York, the proprietor of the colony called New York.
• King Charles II awards New Jersey to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret.

1673

• The first mounted mail service is inaugurated between New York and Boston, and it takes three weeks for a rider to travel the route.

1675

• More than six hundred ships and four thousand New England sailors are engaged in the fishing industry.

1690

• German settlers in Pennsylvania establish the first paper mill.
• Large-scale whaling operations begin off of Nantucket, Massachusetts.
• Enslaved Africans begin to replace white indentured laborers in the Southern colonies.
• Benjamin Harris begins to publish the first newspaper in the British colonies, the Boston Pub lick Occurrences.

1696

• Parliament creates the Board of Trade and Plantations to counsel the king regarding his North American possessions.
• Rice cultivation is introduced in South Carolina.

1698

• Britain opens the slave trade to all its merchants.
• The Woolen Act prohibits the export of woolen goods from America or between the colonies.

1704

• John Campbell establishes the Boston News-Letter.

1712

• Whalers begin to hunt in deeper waters after Christopher Hussey becomes the first American to kill a sperm whale.

1713

• Capt. Andrew Robinson of Gloucester, Massachusetts, builds the first American schooner.

1715

• The volume of the slave trade doubles over the next fifteen years.

1716

• Probably the first lighthouse in the colonies is built on Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor.

1719

• Scots-Irish immigrants begin to grow potatoes in Londonderry, New Hampshire.

1720

• Rice exports from South Carolina grow over the course of the next thirty years.

1728

• Benjamin Franklin begins to publish the Pennsylvania Gazette.

1731

• The Hat Act prevents the production of beaver and felt hats in the colonies.

1732

• A stagecoach line starts operations and connects Burlington with Amboy, New Jersey.

1733

• The Molasses Act imposes a six-pence tax on each gallon of molasses imported from the French and Dutch sugar islands.
• Trustees open Georgia to debtors with the intention that they will help defend the colony from Spanish Florida.

1737

• John Higley of Simsbury, Connecticut, mints the first copper coins in the colonies.

1739

• Caspar Wistar opens his glassworks at Allowaystown, New Jersey.

1740

• James Oglethorpe convinces Parliament to ban slavery in Georgia.
• Indigo is established as a successful staple crop in South Carolina.

1741

• Andrew Duché, a Huguenot residing in Savannah, Georgia, makes the first porcelain in British North America.

1750

• The Iron Act prohibits the expansion of finished iron and steel manufacturing in british North America.

1751

• The Currency Act prevents the colonies from establishing land banks and using public bills of credit to pay private debts.
• Sugarcane is introduced in Louisiana by Catholic missionaries; it is used to make taffia, a kind of rum.

1752

• Georgia trustees legalize slavery.

1753

• The first steam engine arrives in America; John Schuyler of North Arlington, New J ersey, uses it to pump water from his copper mine.
• There are approximately 140,000 African slaves in North America.