The Great Migration The Transformation of English Colonists As history teaches us, the great land we call the United States of America was built on the conquest of Native Americans and their territories and the enslavement of Africans. Although the birth of America was extremely tumultuous, the contact between the three cultures proved to change cultures and values forever. No matter the opinion of how it began, it is no arguing that the interaction between these three cultures built the legacy that is now known as the United States of America. England had become so overpopulated that it was becoming difficult to live comfortably; therefore, explorers began looking to discover more land and as a result found a New World. Relocating to …show more content…
English women were what Native Americans called “spoiled.” They did not work but instead spent their time attending the house receiving an education and sewing. They generally did all of their work for the benefit of the family, and not the outside world. “Women’s Work” would have included such activities as spinning, weaving and churning. In contrast, in the Native American culture, women were the workers of the tribe. Native American women in the southern colonies not only worked the fields but also attended to the house and the children. They often did all of this while being …show more content…
The Chesapeake Bay area was settled by unruly and disorderly young men who were either looking for a fresh start or had been “put out” of England due to their past criminal activity. Puritans who were wealthy and stable participants in society settled the Massachusetts areas. The Puritans left England because of religious persecution and the lack of religious freedom. England’s churches were made up of a church hierarchy that included bishops and other higher -ranking officials. However, when the Puritans began settling in New England, they chose to do away with these positions and instead established a general court. The General Court was made up of white males that made all the decisions regarding the church. The Puritans approach to religion was what led to the invention of congregationalism. Congregationalism is when the church selected its own minister and governed its own religious life (Jafee, David). This way of governing a church is still very much present in the way churches are run in America
Most of the young women who worked their were immigrants from other countries who were just looking to work in America. In this time period
The Puritans created a religiously repressive society that greatly influenced the overall development of New England. Although their society revolved around the church, were all of their beliefs detrimental to the evolution of the colony? Regarding New England’s social development, the Puritans’ stress on community, family and education was advantageous because it caused the region to thrive with more families and small towns. Therefore, since Puritans were more likely to come to the New World’s families instead of individuals, New England had significantly more families settle there than in other regions of colonization. Additionally, Puritans emphasized the importance of a community living together and sustaining its members, which resulted in New England being marked by the development of
Liberty was the key issue for the Puritans. It was liberty, or the lack of, that pushed men to find safe haven, and it was freedom that enticed them to create a new society that never put state and the church hand in hand. By having a taste of liberty, they were introduced to ideas of equality and democracy which became an important part of the community they built and to the future nation that they will create. The foundation of Puritan principles such as piety, democracy and republican freedom, spread its influence over all the colonies, enlightening the “whole American world”.
The idea of the United States having Puritan origins is still alive today. In Sarah Vowell’s, The Wordy Shipmates, the topic of how a nation affiliates itself with Puritan perspectives is introduced. She encourages one to look beyond the surface information of the first English settlers’ motives in the 1600s, and to investigate what Puritan views truly are. She mentions the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, expressing his freedom to enforce his religious views on to a whole colony of people. The superiors of this religious group decided in the colonies what was appropriate for the society they are creating.
In the seventeenth century Chesapeake women had different roles than other colonial women. Chesapeake women were expected to work in the house, raise their kids and work with their husbands in the “tedious care of tobacco plants.” (page 13) Unlike in the English society, they lacked a sense of “housewifery” due to the fact that they had the lack of spinning wheels and churns. (page 13) Since mortality rate was so high it was excepted of not just men but especially women to marry multiply time.
• Here is the question for Module One Discussion: Using evidence from the textbook, your own knowledge, and from real life, answer this question: Was America founded on the idea of freedom and liberty OR was America founded upon slavery? The birthing of a nation is no small feat, when the complex natures of competing forces collide. The Spanish, French, Dutch and English laid claim to swaths of Northern America and pledged allegiance to their mother-lands at the peak of European global colonization in the fifteenth and sixteen centuries. This European mass immigration to the new world drug the unwilling Africans with them in their quest for money and power.
All women in colonial America had certain limits to what they could do. Woman could not own property such as a house. If the husband dies or divorces his wife, the property goes to the eldest son or the eldest male relative. They are also not allowed to divorce their husband. Usually, woman worked at home cleaning, washing, sewing, cooking and making the necessary items of the house hold.
Although all the colonists all came from England, the community development, purpose, and societal make-up caused a distinct difference between two distinct societies in New England and the Chesapeake region. The distinctions were obvious, whether it be the volume of religious drive, the need or lack of community, families versus single settlers, the decision on minimal wage, whether or not articles of agreements were drawn for and titles as well as other social matters were drawn, as well as where loyalties lay in leaders. New England was, overall, more religious than the Chesapeake region. Settlers in New England were searching relief for religious persecution in Europe. Puritans, Quakers, and Catholics were coming in droves to America searching for an opportunity to have religious freedom.
The next chapter highlights the gendered division of labor and the difficulty to keep a family as a slave. Chapter six and seven moves on to the eighteenth century and shows how women have improved in areas such as more political participation and increasing social class of
In colonial North America, the lives of women were distinct and described in the roles exhibited in their inscriptions. In this book, Good Wives the roles of woman were neither simple nor insignificant. Ulrich proves in her writing that these women did it all. They were considered housewives, deputy husbands, mistresses, consorts, mothers, friendly neighbors, and last but not least, heroines. These characteristics played an important role in defining what the reality of women’s lives consisted of.
Ancient stories of the Iroquois tell that women were center of attention and were necessary for a group to survive. They were the farmers, cooks, and responsible for the maintenance of their homes. They shaped their community’s spiritual and daily activities. The responsibility of man was to provide meat for their families by hunting, and protection by warfare. Once hunting was finished, women would turn the hides of buffalo or deer into clothing, blankets, and
Women were able to perform jobs in the house, produce fabrics that allowed for less money being spent on clothing and they also helped their husbands. In other colonist towns around America, women had much stricter jobs. This resulted in women not knowing much about other fields of work and therefore wasn’t able to perform the task at hand unlike Carolina women who could perform servile jobs. 3- Justify the importance for women working in
“The diversity of labor in which female engaged, from working on rich plantations in South Carolina to hiring out as seamstresses in Atlanta,” (Catherine M. Lewis, J. Richard Lewis) Female slaves were put to work very often to do jobs that would only benefit their masters. Many female slaves had to work alongside of the threat of
In addition to railroads, Congress passed numerous acts and laws to encourage people to move west. One of the first acts was the Homestead Act of 1862. Which “gave 160 acres of land to anyone who would pay a $10 registration fee and pledge to live on it and cultivate it for five year” (Divine, Breen, Fredrickson, and Williams 502). Passing this law forged a “mass migration of land-hungry Europeans” (Divine, Breen, Fredrickson, and Williams 502), amazed that a country would relinquish millions of acres for free. Between 1862 and 1900, close to 600,000 families made their way west from free homesteads.
The colonist who migrated to North America, did not come here for one specific reason, but a variety of factors. They Migrated to North America because of social and political factors in England. As well as geographic and economic factors, which were found in the new world. All these settlers all came looking for change. Little did they know, they were the start of the country we know