Colonies in Early America Differences Term Paper

Also, the land in New England did not allow for vast fields of crops, such as Virginia was blessed with. Small farms were the rule of the day in New England.

Another very different part of life for New England was that they had a better relationship with the Indians than the Chesapeake settlers did. The Pokanokets even signed a treaty with the Pilgrims, "and during the colony's first difficult years the Pokanokets supplied the English with essential foodstuffs" (31).

Further, when the Massachusetts Bay Company (MBC) was established in 1629, Congregationalist merchants "boldly decided to transfer the headquarters of the MBC [from England] to New England" (31). This allowed the settlers to handle their own affairs, "secular and religious, as they pleased." This dynamic was very different from the forced ties the Virginians had with the English crown.

Still another major difference (from Chesapeake) in the development of the New England colonies was the strategy for distributing land, which was far more in the communal genre: "Unlike Virginia and Maryland, where individual applicants sought headrights for themselves and their servants, in Massachusetts groups of families...applied together to the General Court for grants of land on which to establish towns" (33). Hence, the settlements in New England "initially tended to be more compact than those in Chesapeake," because the centers of towns "grew up quickly."

Also, "in contrast to Chesapeake migrants, Puritans commonly moved to America in family groups" (35); also, New Englanders - "unlike the residents of Chesapeake" - "constructed sturdy, permanent dwellings, intended to last for many years." Also, the New Englanders used fertilizer rather than clearing new fields each year as the Virginian colonists tended to do. And the Chesapeake population featured "families that were few in number, small in size, and transitory" - contrasted with New England families were "large, and long-lived" (35).

As to life expectancy, in Chesapeake, parents "normally died before their children married" because "adult male migrants lost about ten years from their English life expectancy of 50 to 55 years," while the colonists in New England "gained about ten years" (35).

Incidentally, a "little known facet of life in the early Chesapeake" (which sets this colony apart from New England) was that "making alcohol was women's work." And, according to the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (Meacham, 2002), the Chesapeake colonists "adapted to the new world by using alcoholic beverage as a lens."

References

Collier, Christopher. Decision in Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention of 1787.

New York: Random House: Reader's Digest, 1986.

Meachem, Sarah Hand. "They Will be Adjudged by Their Drink, What Kinds of Housewives They Are." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 111 (2002):

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