New England Colonies
The colonies of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire were called New England Colonies because they were first settled by England. In addition, these four colonies all began as places where the colonists were free to practice their religion, which they could not do in England because the king of England saw them as a threat to his power.
Settlement of the New England Colonies began in 1620 when a group of English religious refugees, called Pilgrims, left for America. They wanted to be able to practice their religion without being persecuted, or treated badly, by the king of England. Their ship, known as the Mayflower, landed in what is now Massachusetts. The Pilgrims decided to stay and called the colony Plymouth, after the city in England that the Mayflower had left from. The Pilgrims signed a document called the Mayflower Compact, which set up a democratic government where the Pilgrims promised to obey laws that were passed “for the general good of the colony.”
Later, other groups followed the Pilgrims to America seeking religious freedom. Among them were the Puritans. Puritans started a colony called Massachusetts, which was governed by an elected group of religious leaders that wanted to govern according to Puritan religious ideas.
This type of government is called a theocracy, or rule by religion. Other religions were not allowed in the colony and people who disagreed with Puritan ideas and beliefs were expelled.
Some of those who were expelled left to start new colonies. One of these people was Roger
Williams. He was banished, or expelled, from Massachusetts for disagreeing with Puritan leaders. He started a new colony, called Rhode Island, which became a place that practiced religious toleration, or acceptance of different beliefs.
As more and more colonists came to settle the New England colonies, trade became more important. Since the soil in New England was too rocky for large farms, most colonial New
England families grew only enough food for themselves. In order to make money, New
Englanders cut lumber from the forests. This lumber was then used to build ships. Besides shipbuilding and cutting lumber, fishing and livestock were also important ways that the New
England colonists were able to make money.

Middle Colonies
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware were known as the Middle Colonies because they were located between the New England Colonies and the Southern Colonies. The first colonists in the Middle Colonies were the Dutch, but the English used their powerful navy to force the Dutch to surrender their land to the English. The king then gave the captured land to
English nobles to settle.
When the Dutch controlled New York it was called New Amsterdam, but when it was captured by the English it was renamed New York after the king’s brother, the Duke of York, received the land as a gift from the king. The English then used the port of New York City as a center for shipping goods produced in the colonies to England as well as a place where items like sugar and rum were imported, or brought in, to the colonies from the Caribbean islands. This three-sided relationship was known as triangular trade.
Another Middle Colony was Pennsylvania which was given to William Penn by the king as payment for a debt. William Penn was a Quaker, a persecuted religious group in England, and he wanted to make Pennsylvania a place where Quakers could be free to practice their religion.
As a result of the Quaker beliefs of equality and tolerance, Pennsylvania was home to the most diverse group of colonists including English, Dutch, Irish, and German settlers.
At first, the king and nobles in England controlled the government in the Middle
Colonies, but the colonists were not happy about being controlled by people who had never even been to the colonies. The colonists wanted to elect their own representatives so that they could make some of their own decisions. By 1701 both New York and Pennsylvania had established legislatures, or places where laws are made.
Unlike the New England colonies, the soil in the Middle Colonies was good for farming.
Farmers were able to grow cash crops, or crops that can be sold for a profit, such as wheat. Also, the larger areas of land encouraged the raising of livestock, such as cattle. Industries like shipbuilding and textiles, or cloth making, were also important and were centered around the two largest cities in the colonies, New York City and Philadelphia.

Southern Colonies
The Southern Colonies included Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Georgia. These colonies are grouped together because they were all originally settled by the
English, had rich soil for growing cash crops, and relied on slave labor. There were some differences among the Southern Colonies, however. For example, Maryland was originally started as a place for English Catholics to freely practice their religion and Georgia was set up as a place where debtors, or people who could not pay their debts, could start over. Overall though, the five Southern Colonies were more similar than different.
Settlements in the Southern colonies were started by groups of investors who were trying to find a way to make money off of the newly discovered lands in America. These investors received charters, or rights to organize settlements, from the king. The first chartered colonies were not very successful because of a severe lack of food, harsh winters, and conflict with Native
Americans. It was not until the English settlers learned how to grow and produce tobacco that any of these chartered colonies became successful. Tobacco became a major cash crop for the
Southern Colonies. Rice and indigo, which was a plant that was used to dye cloth, were also important crops grown in the south. Since these crops were very profitable, some farms in the
Southern Colonies grew larger and larger. The largest farms were called plantations. Africans who had been captured in Africa, shipped to the colonies, and sold to the owners of the plantation mostly did the work on plantations. These enslaved Africans had no rights in colonial society. By contrast, the plantation owners were the wealthiest and most powerful people in the
Southern colonies. Most people, though, were small independent farmers.
At first, the colonists controlled government in the Southern colonies. For example, the
House of Burgesses in Virginia was a group of representatives that were elected by the men who owned property in the colony. As the Southern colonies became more profitable though, the king began to control the governing of the colonies more and more so that he and the English government could make more money.