1600-1754: Business and Communications: Chronology
1600-1754: Business and Communications: Chronology
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.
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1600-1754: Business and Communications: Chronology
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1600-1754: Business and Communications: Chronology