Exploration and Settlement
Although
John Cabot (ca. 1450-1499) established an English claim to the North
American continent as early as 1497-1498, more than half a century elapsed
before Englishmen turned their attention to the new lands. The most well-known
early colony was founded by Sir Walter Raleigh (ca. 1554-1618) on Roanoke
Island, off the coast of present-day North Carolina. Raleigh sent groups
of settlers for three years, beginning in 1584. Left for three years,
the 117 men, women, and children had disappeared mysteriously by the
time a relief party arrived in 1590.
Raleigh's initiative was successfully
imitated by a group of London investors who founded Virginia in 1607.
Subsequently, a variety of English settlements took root in North America,
conspicuous among which were the religious "plantations" of the Puritans
in New England, the Quakers in the Middle Colonies, and the Catholics
in Maryland. By the end of the seventeenth century, approximately 250,000
European men and women lived in the area that later became the United
States. All but a handful were English.
On the eve of the American Revolution
as many as 2,500,000 people lived in the rebellious colonies. Although
substantial numbers were Germans, or Africans brought as slaves, the
overwhelming majority were English and Scotch-Irish -- Scots who had
settled in northern Ireland. The Scotch-Irish began emigrating in large
numbers early in the eighteenth century.
Immigration from Great Britain often came
in waves: huge numbers fled famine in Ireland -- part of Britain until
the early twentieth century -- after 1845, and others came during events
such as the California Gold Rush in 1849. The last large group immigrated
immediately after World War II, when an estimated 70,000 British "war
brides" arrived in the United States. Recently the United States Immigration
and Naturalization Service estimated that approximately five million
immigrants from Great Britain, excluding Ireland, had entered the United
States since 1820.
Jodocus
Hondius. Vera Totius Expeditionis
Nauticae. Amsterdam: 1595. Hand-colored engraving.
Enlarged version
Geography and Map
Division, Library of Congress (1a)
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Drake Circumnavigates the Globe
Published by the noted Dutch cartographer,
Jodocus Hondius (1563-1611), this double hemisphere world
map records Sir Francis Drake's (ca. 1540-1596) hugely profitable
circumnavigation of the globe, between 1577 and 1580. It
also traces the route of his countryman, Thomas Cavendish
(1560-1592), who duplicated the feat a few years later. Drake's
ship, the Golden Hind, is shown at the bottom of the map;
the illustration at the upper left is Drake's landing at
New Albion in present-day California.
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Drake Pillages a Spanish Settlement
Shown here is Sir Francis Drake's (ca.
1540-1596), 1586 attack on St. Augustine, Florida. The six-sided
fort and the town are depicted as under simultaneous assault.
Victorious, Drake looted and burned the settlement and sailed
northward, stopping at Raleigh's Roanoke Island settlement
on the way to England.
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Baptista
Boazio.
Augustine par Floridae.
London: 1589.
Hand-colored map.
Drake Collection,
Rare Books and Special Collections Division, Library
of Congress (1b)
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Edward
Waterhouse.
A Declaration of the State of the
Colony and Affaires in Virginia. . . .
London: 1622.
The British Library (10)
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"Needefull Things" for a Virginia Immigrant
Many of the earliest immigrants to Virginia
died within a year of arrival. This trend hurt the colony's
reputation and prompted the promoters to issue, in 1622,
a list of "provisions" necessary to survive in the New World.
Despite the differences in climate, this list was copied
in abbreviated form in 1630 by promoters of settlement in
New England.
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Exploits of Captain John Smith
Captain John Smith (c.1580-1631) was governor
of the Virginia colony from 1608 to1609. He saved the floundering
venture with his energy and decisiveness. In 1624 Smith published
a Historie of his exploits in Virginia, illustrated by this
series of engravings. They show him encountering and overcoming
various perils, including being rescued at the last minute
from King Powhatan's executioners by the monarch's daughter,
Pocahontas.
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Captain John Smith.
The Generall Historie of
Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles.
London: Michael Sparks, 1624, p. 40.
Enlarged image
Rare Book and Special
Collections Division, Library of Congress (12)
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John
Winthrop. Consideracons
for the Plantacon of New England. 1622, title
page.
Manuscript Division,
Library of Congress (15)
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Why the Puritans Left England
Recently discovered in the Library's Peter
Force Collection, this pamphlet is a previously unknown,
contemporary copy of John Winthrop's "General Observations
for the Plantation of New England," written in the summer
of 1629 to justify the Puritan migration to New England.
Winthrop (1588-1649) offered a series of reasons for the
proposed emigration and refuted various objections to the
enterprise.
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Puritan Apparel
Many Puritans were solidly middle class
and wore good-quality clothing, provided it was not ostentatious.
A Puritan woman in Old England, and quite likely New England
as well, might have resembled the figure seen in this publication
of 1640 .
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Wenceslaus
Hollar.
Ornatus muliebris Anglicanus or
the Severall Habits of English Women.
London: Overton, 1640, plates 17, 18.
Early Printed Collections, The British Library (17)
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William
Hooke.
New Englands Teares, for
Old Englands Feares.
London: John Rothwell and Henry Overton, 1641, title page.
Rare Book and Special
Collections Division, Library of Congress (18)
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"Much Love to
a Countrey Left"
This sermon was preached by Rev. William
Hook (1600-1678) at Taunton, Massachusetts, on July 23, 1640,
on a day of fasting and humiliation for "our Native countrey
in time of feared dangers" produced by the impending civil
war in England. In a preface the sermon is described as"preached
to some in New England for Old England's sake: wherein is
expressed much love to a Countrey left."
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Slaves for England's Colonies
In 1660 Charles II (1630-1685) granted
the Royal African Company a charter securing a monopoly of
trade in West Africa, from which the Company began supplying
slaves to England's American colonies. This broadside describes
the company's thirteen forts and five factories in West Africa.
The broadside was apparently produced as part of the Company's
unsuccessful effort to prevent legislation, passed in 1698,
dissolving its monopoly.
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"A
Particular of the Royal African Company: Forts and Castles
in Africa,"
ca. 1698.
Broadside.
Printed Ephemera Collection,
Rare Book and Special
Collections Division, Library of Congress (19)
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"Description
of the Towne of Mannados or New Amsterdam as it was in
September 1661,"
1664.
Map Collections, The British Library (21)
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Duke's Map of New York
This map of New York City was presented
to James, Duke of York (1633-1701), the future James II,
shortly after the English captured New Amsterdam from the
Dutch in 1664. Probably copied from a map made for Dutch
authorities in 1661 by Jacques Cortelyou, the map shows the
town walls from which the name"Wall Street" is derived as
well as the Battery.
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William Penn Leaves England
William Penn wrote and dated this pamphlet,
August 30, 1682, the day he sailed from Deal, on the south
coast of England, for America aboard the Welcome. In this "solemn
Farewel to them all in the Land of my Nativity," Penn saluted
Quakers who had kept the faith in spite of the tribulations
they had experienced, rebuked the "Unsanctified and Unregenerated," and
encouraged "enquirers after the truth."
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William
Penn.
William Penn's Last Farewell
to England.
London: Thomas Cooke, 1682.
Rare Book and Special
Collections Division, Library of Congress (22)
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John
Locke.
The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina.
London: 1669.
Rare Book and Special
Collections Division, Library of Congress (26)
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Locke's Constitution for Carolina
A leading spirit among the Carolina proprietors
was Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftsbury (1621-1683).
In 1669 Shaftsbury enlisted his secretary, John Locke (1632-1704),
the political philosopher, to draft a constitution for the
new colony. Designed to avoid "erecting a numerous democracy," the
document created a complicated hierarchical society with
a landed aristocracy firmly in control. The constitution
was never enacted into law.
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Carolina Birds
In 1722 Mark Catesby (1683-1749) was
sent to Carolina by members of Britain's scientific and political
establishment to study and describe the local fauna and flora.
Catesby spent approximately three years in South Carolina,
Georgia, and Florida, returning to England in 1726. In 1731
he published his classic Natural History. Shown
here is Catesby's drawing of the passenger pigeon, later
hunted to extinction by Americans.
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Mark Catesby.
The Natural History of Carolina,
Florida, and the Bahama Islands.
London: 1731, p. 23.
Rare Book and Special
Collections Division, Library of Congress (27)
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Joseph
Smith. Y perl o fawr bris.
. . .[The Pearl of Great Price]. Merthyr-Tydfil:
John Davis, 1852.
Modern Collections, The British Library (28)
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British Mormon Emigration
The Church of Jesus of Latter-Day Saints
began proselytizing in the British Isles in 1837. Between
1847 and 1869 more than 32,000 British Mormons emigrated
to the United States. This is a Welsh language version of
the writings of Joseph Smith (1805-1844), the church's religious
leader. The picture represents Abraham being offered up for
sacrifice by an Egyptian priest, as described in the Book
of Abraham, which Smith claimed to have translated from a
papyrus written by Abraham himself.
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Irish Immigration
Famine forced more than a million Irish
to emigrate to the United States in the decade after 1845.
Seen here is a poor Irishman, leaving home to try his luck
in the United States. The benevolent author of this guide
for prospective emigrants claims to have gained first-hand
knowledge of what faced the "penny emigrant" by having himself
crossed the Atlantic twice as a steerage passenger.
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Vere
Foster.
Work & Wages; or, the Penny Emigrant's Guide to the
United States and Canada, for Female Servants, Laborers,
Mechanics, Farmers, & . . . .
first page - second
page
Fifth ed. London: W. and F.G. Cash, [1855].
Modern Collections, The British Library (29)
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J.L.
Giles.
"The Great International Caledonian
Games: New York, July 1, 1867."
New York: Kelly & Whitehill, ca. 1868.
Lithograph.
Prints and Photographs
Division, Library of Congress (30)
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Scotland Forever
Scots, or Caledonians, as they sometimes
called themselves, did not begin arriving in America in large
numbers until early in the eighteenth century, when the Scotch-Irish,
natives of Scotland who had settled in Northern Ireland,
began pouring into British North America. Some estimate the
number of Scotch-Irish immigrants as high as 250,000 on the
eve of the American Revolution. Scottish and Scotch-Irish
immigration continued into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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California Here We Come
In this satire a clerk named Mivins gets
gold fever, leaves a steady job in London, and sets out to
strike it rich in the California Gold Rush of 1849. Swindled,
robbed, and at last destitute, Mivins is rescued from a suicide
attempt and, sadder but wiser, works his way back to Britain
as a common sailor. Approximately 20,000 Britons participated
in the California Gold Rush.
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Alfred Crowquill [Alfred Henry Forrester].
A Goodnatured Hint about
California.
[London]: D. Bouge, [1849].
page 1 - page
2 - page 3 - page
4
page 5 - page
6 - page 7 - page
8
Early Collections, The British Library (31)
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The Library does not have permission to
display this image online.
"War Brides Begin Arriving
in U.S."
Life, February 18, 1946,
pp. 28-29.
General Collections,
Library of Congress(32)
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British War Brides
The Argentina was the first of the "nursery
ships" fitted out by the American government in the winter
of 1946 to bring as many as 70,000 British "GI Brides" and
their children to the United States. The American media worked
to disabuse the country of the notion that the war brides
were an unsavory collection of "Piccadilly commandos." According
to the New York Times, the women were daughters of ordinary
British families, "than whom there is nobody more respectable."
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