You probably remember the basic song or the chart from middle school. Virginia was first, Georgia was last, and there was a whole lot of tea-dumping in between. But if you actually look at 13 colonies when founded, the timeline isn't nearly as clean as a textbook makes it look. History is rarely a straight line. It's more like a series of failed experiments, religious arguments, and people just trying not to starve in the woods.
People often ask for a single year for each colony. It’s never that simple. Do you count the year the ship landed? The year the King signed a piece of paper? Or the year the colony finally stopped collapsing?
Take Virginia. We say 1607. That’s the "official" answer because of Jamestown. But honestly, the English had been trying—and failing—to stick the landing for decades before that. Roanoke happened in the 1580s and everyone just... disappeared. So, when we talk about when these places started, we're really talking about when the English finally figured out how to stay alive long enough to build a fence.
The Early Starters and the Survival Gap
Virginia (1607) was the messy pioneer. It wasn't a bunch of families looking for a new life; it was a bunch of guys working for the Virginia Company of London. They wanted gold. They found mosquitoes and swamp fever instead. It took years for it to become a "colony" in the sense of a functioning society. Captain John Smith had to basically tell everyone that if they didn't work, they wouldn't eat. Harsh? Yeah. Effective? Sorta.
Then you have Massachusetts in 1620. Well, 1620 (Plymouth) and then 1630 (Massachusetts Bay). It’s a huge distinction. The Pilgrims were the "Plan A" that most people think of, but the Puritans who arrived a decade later were the ones who really built the powerhouse. They weren't looking for gold; they were looking for a place where everyone agreed with their very specific, very strict religious views.
- Virginia (1607): Primarily an economic venture.
- Massachusetts (1620/1630): A religious refuge that grew into a political hub.
- New Hampshire (1623): Founded by John Mason for fishing and trading, though it spent a lot of time being part of Massachusetts.
Why the Middle Colonies Took Their Time
The middle of the map is where things get interesting because the English weren't the only ones there. If you’re looking at 13 colonies when founded, you can't ignore the Dutch. New York wasn't New York at first; it was New Netherland.
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In 1624, the Dutch set up shop on Manhattan. They were great at it, too. But in 1664, the English showed up with warships and basically told the Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant, to hand over the keys. He didn't really have a choice. So, New York "became" an English colony in 1664, even though people had been living there for forty years. It’s all about who owns the deed.
Maryland (1634) was a bit of an outlier. Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, wanted a place where Catholics wouldn't get persecuted. It was a noble goal, but it led to decades of internal bickering between the Catholic leadership and the Protestant majority who actually lived there.
The Religious Domino Effect
Rhode Island (1636) and Connecticut (1636) exist because Massachusetts was too strict. Roger Williams got kicked out of Massachusetts for having "dangerous" ideas—like the radical notion that you shouldn't steal land from Native Americans and that church and state should be separate. He fled south in the middle of winter and started Providence.
Connecticut followed a similar path. Thomas Hooker thought the governor of Massachusetts had too much power. He led his congregation to Hartford. These weren't just "new settlements"; they were protests.
The Late Bloomers: The Carolinas, Jersey, and Penn’s Woods
There's a big gap in the mid-1600s because England was busy with a civil war. Once they got their King back (the Restoration), they started handing out land like party favors.
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- New Jersey (1664): Originally part of the New York takeover, then split into East and West Jersey before finally becoming one colony.
- Pennsylvania (1681): William Penn got this land because the King owed his father a massive debt. Penn was a Quaker, which meant he wanted a "Holy Experiment" where everyone was welcome. It worked surprisingly well.
- Delaware (1638/1681): This one is confusing. It was started by the Swedes (New Sweden), then taken by the Dutch, then the English, then it was part of Pennsylvania until 1704 when it got its own assembly.
The Carolinas started as one big chunk in 1663. It was a "proprietary" colony, meaning a group of eight lords owned it. But the north and the south were totally different. The north was full of small farmers from Virginia; the south was full of wealthy planters from Barbados. They officially split into North Carolina and South Carolina in 1712 because they basically couldn't agree on how to run things.
Georgia: The Great Social Experiment of 1732
By the time Georgia was founded in 1732, the other colonies were already established societies. Georgia was different. James Oglethorpe wanted it to be a place for the "worthy poor"—specifically people in debtors' prisons. He also wanted it to be a buffer zone between the valuable South Carolina plantations and Spanish Florida.
Oglethorpe had some strict rules. No slavery. No hard liquor. No lawyers.
Naturally, the settlers hated these rules. They looked at South Carolina making a fortune off rice and slavery and wanted in on the action. By the 1750s, the "experiment" part of Georgia was over, and it became just another royal colony.
The Reality of the "Founding" Dates
When you see a list of dates, keep in mind that these years represent the moment the English government decided to care. For the people on the ground, "founding" meant not dying in the first winter. It meant building relationships (or fighting) with the Indigenous tribes like the Powhatan or the Wampanoag who had been there for thousands of years.
Understanding 13 colonies when founded requires looking past the years and seeing the motivations.
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- Money: Virginia, New York, New Hampshire.
- Religion: Massachusetts, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island.
- Strategy: Georgia.
What Most People Get Wrong
We tend to think of the 13 colonies as a united group from the start. They weren't. They didn't even like each other most of the time. A guy from Boston in 1700 would have felt like a total stranger in Charleston. They had different currencies, different religions, and different ways of making money.
The only thing that really brought them together was the fact that they were all on the edge of a continent, thousands of miles away from a King who kept trying to tell them what to do.
Actionable Next Steps for History Buffs
If you want to go deeper than just memorizing dates, here is how you can actually "see" this history today:
- Visit the "Historic Triangle" in Virginia: Skip the gift shops and look at the archaeological digs in Jamestown. Seeing how small the original fort was changes your perspective on how precarious life was in 1607.
- Check out the "Charter Oak" lore in Connecticut: It's a great rabbit hole about how the colonies started hiding their original legal documents from the King’s agents.
- Trace the "Great Wagon Road": Look at how people moved from the early colonies like Pennsylvania down into the Carolinas. It explains why the "backcountry" of these states has a completely different culture than the coast.
- Read Primary Sources: Look up the Mayflower Compact or the Maryland Toleration Act. They aren't long, and they show you exactly what these people were worried about.
History isn't just about what happened in 1607 or 1732. It’s about the fact that these dates represent the start of a massive, unintentional experiment that eventually became a country.