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New England
| | | | The English settlements on the Atlantic coast grew into thirteen colonies. The colonies can be divided into three regions: the New England colonies, the Middle colonies and the Southern colonies.
The New England colonies were Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire. New England has long and cold winters. The land is rocky and hard to farm. Life was not easy for the colonists, but New Englanders worked hard. By the mid-1700's small villages had grown into towns. One town, Boston, had become a city of major importance in the colonies.
Rhode Island. The Massachusetts colony had been settled by the Puritans who had come to America for religious freedom. But they themselves did not allow any religious freedom to anybody: they considered their own ideas, the ideas of the Puritan Church, the only right ones. There was no religious toleration in Massachusetts. Yet some people disagreed with the Puritan leaders.
Roger Williams, a popular young priest in the colony, disagreed with some of the Puritan teachings. He was told to stop talking about his ideas. When he refused, he was ordered to leave the colony. Williams walked for four days through a terrible snow storm and freezing cold. Finally he reached a camp of friendly American Indians. The Indians invited Williams to spend the winter with them. In spring they helped him to start his own settlement. He called it Providence. The new settlement grew into a separate colony, Rhode Island. Rhode Island's first law was about religious toleration. It allowed people to worship as they wished.
Life in New England. Religious worship was very important to most New Englanders. The church was often the centre of social life. Families spent long hours listening to sermons.
Each village usually had a large open land area, called the village green, in the middle of the village. The village green belonged to the whole community. It served as an outdoor place for people to gather. The meeting-house, usually a church, was built next to the village green. Each village also had a shop. The village shop sold everything from food to clothes and hardware. Money was seldom used to buy goods. Instead, people used a trading system called barter. They exchanged all kinds of goods. Farmers often traded maple syrup and eggs for flour or candles.
Along the Atlantic coast people made their living by fishing. Timber from nearby forests was used to build ships. Some towns along the coast became shipbuilding centres.
As the colonies grew, they began to trade with each other and with Great Britain. New Englanders sent pickled meat, vegetables, fish and timber to the West Indies in exchange for sugar and rum. Iron and tobacco were shipped to Great Britain and traded for manufactured goods, such as tools.
With the growth of trade, the ways of life in the colonies were changing. In the early colonial years people had to make or grow everything they needed themselves. But as the colonies grew, some people left their farms to work in the growing colonial towns and cities. They became priests, lawyers, bankers and merchants. There were blacksmiths, shoemakers, candlemakers and barrelmakers.
Education was highly valued in New England. Religious leaders wanted children to be able to read the Bible, so they started schools. Until 1750 only boys went to school. These early schools were usually just one room heated by a wood-burning stove. In winter the boys sat close together to keep warm. They learned reading, writing and arithmetic. Larger towns built secondary schools, where the pupils studied Latin and Greek.
In 1636 Harvard College was founded near Boston. It was the first college in the thirteen colonies. Later it grew into the famous Harvard University.
All children were expected to work at home. Young children milked the cows and took care of the animals. Girls helped to make food and clothing. Boys chopped wood and helped to plough the fields.
In the towns children learned their parents' trade. Depending on what their fathers did, boys learned how to make barrels, candles, shoes or iron tools. Sometimes girls worked in a shop. But usually they cleaned, took care of younger children in the family, sewed and cooked with their mothers at home.
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