xxiv CHRONOLOGY
P E R S P E C T I V E S I N A M E R I C A N S O C I A L H I S T O R Y
the fact that many white women perform similar labor and lowers the sta-
tus of black women.
1650 Anne Bradstreet’s first collection of poetry, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up
in America, By a Gentlewoman of Those Parts , is published.
1662 Virginia passes a law that dictates that children born to slave mothers are
slaves. The same law doubles the fines for fornication between an African
and a white person, making interracial sex illegal.
1664 The English invade New Netherland and rename the colony New York.
1670 The English found the colony of South Carolina.
1675–1676 New England Algonquians under the leadership of Metacom, known
by the English as King Philip, join together to fight the English settlers in
New England in King Philip’s War.
1676 Nathanial Bacon leads a rebellion consisting primarily of formerly inden-
tured servants in Virginia. Bacon’s group attacks Indians and then burns
Jamestown.
1682 Mary Rowlandson publishes Sovereignty and Goodness of God, which chronicles
her capture and imprisonment among Narragansett Indians in Massachusetts
during King Philip’s War.
1692 The Salem witch trials begin because several young women accuse some
women and men of practicing witchcraft. The colonial governor of Massa-
chusetts halts the trials in 1693.
1702 Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville founds Mobile (in present-day Alabama), giving
the French a strong claim to the Louisiana area.
1727 Ursuline nuns open a convent in New Orleans.
1730s –1770s The Great Awakening occurs in the British colonies of the present-
day United States as ministers from different Protestant denominations lead
religious revivals. The revivals begin in the Middle and New England Colo-
nies and spread to the South by the 1750s.
1738 At age 15, Eliza Lucas ( Pickney) moves with her family to South Carolina,
where she soon begins to experiment with growing the indigo plant.
1742 Bethlehem Female Seminary (now coed Moravian College) is founded in
Pennsylvania, the first American boarding school for young women.
1754 –1763 The French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years’ War, is
fought between the French and the English and their Indian allies in the
Americas and spreads to Europe. Many colonial men die in the war, leaving
women widowed and children orphaned. The war also highlights differences
between English and American culture.
1763 The French cede Louisiana to the Spanish.
1764 The British impose the Sugar Act on the American colonies, which enforces
duties on non-British imports of molasses and refined sugar.
