LIFE IN THE ENGLISH
COLONIES
DIFFERENT LIFESTYLES
FOR
DIFFERENT REGIONS
NEW ENGLAND COLONIES
• Most people made a living on small family
farms or from the sea.
• A short, 5 month growing
season meant crops were
used by the family, with
not much left to sell or
trade.
• Small town life – close knit communities
began to develop.
• Religion a big part of their lives.
FAMILY LIFE
• All life centered around the family.
• Families of 8-9 was considered normal.
• Everyone expected to help around the house.
BOYS
• Would help Mom around the house, chopping
wood, carrying water, etc.
• At 8 or 9 years old they would
then help Dad out in the
fields, hunting, fishing, etc.
• At around age 12 things got
really interesting.
• At around the age of 12, if the family could
afford it, a boy could be sent to work as an
apprentice to a master craftsman.
GIRLS
• Girls would do all those things that mom
would do, cooking, cleaning, sewing,
gardening, watching younger children, etc.
• They would do this in
anticipation of, one day, caring
for a husband and family.
• Then process would then
begin again.
• At around the age of 13 or 14 girls might
sometimes be sent out of the home to work
as servants for more affluent families. They
would do all the things a mom would do.
RELIGION IN NEW ENGLAND
• In order to understand the Word of God a
person had to understand the Bible. To
understand the Bible you had to be able to
read.
• The Puritans valued LITERACY and education.
• In 1647 a law was
passed in
Massachusetts
saying that any
town with 50 or
more families had
to provide an
instructor to teach
reading and writing
to the children
(mostly boys) of
the town.
• Younger children were taught at home until
they reached school age.
• Children who showed intellectual promise
sometimes went to Harvard.
• Girls went to school to learn reading, writing
and basic math.
THE MIDDLE COLONIES
• Settled by those looking for job opportunities,
good farm land and religious freedom.
• Rivers in the Middle
Colonies were used to
power mills and for
transportation.
• The Middle Colonies became a center of
trade.
• New York and Philadelphia became major
ports.
• Skilled craftsman also came
to this region.
• Education in the Middle Colonies was handled
by religious groups.
• If your family wasn’t religious then you were
taught at home. If Mom or Dad had no formal
education, chances are you wouldn’t either.
THE SOUTHERN COLONIES
• Southern Colonies drastically different than
Middle and New England.
• An 8 month growing season allowed for the
growing of cash crops such as tobacco, indigo,
rice and later cotton.
• Southern colonies did not evolve into closeknit communities. No small towns here.
• Plantations had to be SELF-SUFFICIENT.
• There was no formal schooling. If your
parents were educated you might be taught at
home.
• Rich families would sometimes hire tutors
from the north to teach their sons.
• Sometimes their sons would be sent to
college in England.
THE BACKCOUNTRY
• Stretched from Georgia to Pennsylvania,
behind the coastal plain, just east of the
Appalachians.
• Good hunting and fishing
areas.
• Settled by mainly Irish and Scottish settlers
who wanted to get as far away from the
English as possible.
•
•
•
•
Their lives centered around the family.
They had no particular religious beliefs.
They had no formal education.
If Mom and Dad weren’t educated, then you
weren’t either.
COLONIAL DIVERSITY
• Early prejudices were tied to religion. Roger
Williams, Anne Hutchinson, Thomas Hooker,
etc.
• Later prejudices included racism, nationalism,
and sexism.
• RACISM: The belief that one race of people is
superior to another.
• The first accounts of racism in the colonies
was against the Indians.
• The Indians were here first, they had a thriving
culture, a history and a heritage that should
have been respected. Instead all those things
were destroyed. Every time the colonists and
Indians got near each other there
was conflict.
• The next example of racism was beyond
brutal. Literally millions of innocent people
taken from their homes and forced into
servitude and a life of hard labor. I’m referring
to the enslavement of AFRICANS.
THE TRIANGLE TRADE
• Rum, Guns, Bibles, Cloth and other items are
loaded on ships and sent to Africa.
• The ships are unloaded and captured slaves
are put on board.
THE MIDDLE PASSAGE
• The part of the Triangular Trade Route that went
from Africa to the West Indies.
• The Middle Passage can be considered one of
the worst treatments of human beings against
other human beings in the history of the
world.
• The month long journey was barbaric and
cruel.
• The slaves are taken off the ships and sold at
auction. Some stay in the Caribbean, others
are taken to the Colonies.
• The ships are loaded with sugar & molasses
and travel to North America, where the
process begins again.
SLAVE LIFE
• A slave could be expected to be sold at least
once in their lifetime, maybe more.
• While working they were watched by an
overseer, who would whip them if necessary.
• Slaves worked from Sunup to Sundown or
longer if there was a “Harvest Moon”.
• They lived in a one room shack with a dirt
floor, that bred multiple diseases.
• Slaves were beaten on a daily basis. For any
one of a number of offenses.
• Families were broken up.
• They could run away, but that was a big
mistake.
COLONIAL TRADE
• One area of life colonists did not control was
trade.
• Parliament passed the Navigation Acts, laws
designed to control trade in the colonies.
NAVIGATION ACTS
• Any products going to or coming from the
colonies had to be carried on British or
colonial ships.
• Certain ENUMERATED ARTICLES could only be
sold to England:
Rice
Furs
Tobacco
Indigo
Sugar
Cotton
Lumber
• Any item going to the colonies from any other
country had to go to England first to be taxed.
• Colonists got around these laws by smuggling
goods into the country.
• By the 1750’s the British government was
starting to crack down on smuggling.