Download Vocabulary Colonial terms

Colonial Vocabulary Weeks 5 & 6
1. Algonquian Indians. One of the first tribes with whom the French made an alliance, they were
driven from the St. Lawrence River area by the Iroquois. Their name was extended to the language
group of tribes covering eastern Canada and the US Atlantic coast.
2. Anglican Church. The Church of England, which broke with Rome in 1534, was Protestant in
doctrine but rooted in Catholic hierarchy and ceremony. The 26 senior bishops sit in the House of
Lords and are led by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Anglican Church remains the established
state religion of England. The American branch is called the Episcopal Church, or Episcopalians.
3. Appalachian Mountains. Mountain system in North America running inland parallel to the Atlantic
coast from the state of Alabama north to Maine.
4. Baltimore, Lord. George Calvert (1580-1632) was granted proprietorship of what became Maryland
by Charles I of England in 1632. Lord Baltimore, who was a Roman Catholic, died before the charter
was signed.
5. Boston. Founded in 1630 as the capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, this city is today the
capital of Massachusetts and the leading city of New England.
6. Charter. A grant or guarantee of right, franchises, or privileges to a colony or group of people
from the sovereign power of a state or country.
7. Commission A formal written contract granting the power to perform various acts or duties.
8. Commonwealth A nation or state in which supreme authority is held by the people.
9. Dissenter One who dissents or differs in opinion.
10. House of Burgesses. The first representative assembly of colonial America, it was established in
Virginia in 1619 with two delegates from each of eleven plantations. In the years leading up to the
Revolutionary War, the House of Burgesses became a hotbed of revolutionary sentiment, with such
notables as Patrick Henry, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson in attendance. Its deliberations
and traditions in this period are described by Thomas Jefferson in his autobiography.
11. House of Commons. Lower house of the British parliament. This body has slowly come to
represent the mass of the British people as the feudal period evolved into the modern period, and
power in Britain was slowly wrested from the monarchy and installed in this representative body.
12. House of Lords. Upper house of the British parliament. All peers or lords of the realm are
members, as well as 26 bishops of the Church of England. This body has slowly lost power, along with
the monarchy, but it can still delay passage of a Commons bill for up to a year.
13. Iroquois Confederacy. This was a political union of five Indian tribes west of the Great Lakes:
the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Senecca, formed in the 16th century. Hunters and
farmers, they were peaceful together but fearsome to others. In the 1600s they were supplied with
firearms by the Dutch, and became supreme in New England. Most of them sided with the British in
the Revolutionary War, and were consequently devastated by the Americans. By 1800 they had lost
most of their territory, often through treaty violations and land fraud.
14. Jamestown. Founded in 1607 as the James Fort on a small peninsula on the James River. The
House of Burgesses first met there in 1619. It was the capital of Virginia until 1699, when the
capital was moved to Williamsburg, to the northwest. The ruins of the original fort were rediscovered
in 1996.
15. Parliament. A body of elected representatives responsible for writing a country's laws and
controlling its finance. A country ruled by a parliament is a republic. The mother of all parliaments is
the British Parliament.
16. Plantation. A large farm where laborers live on its grounds.
17. Proprietary. Privately owned and managed.
18. Protestant. A Christian denying the universal authority of the Pope and affirming the Reformation
principles of justification by faith alone, the priesthood of all believers, and the primacy of the Bible
as the only source of revealed truth.
19. Puritans. The Puritans were English Protestants who wanted a simple form of worship based on
Scripture, a devout personal and family life, and the abolition of church hierarchy. The Puritans have
had a continuing and powerful effect on the United States. Their town meetings were the first
example of grass-roots democracy in America. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts began the
Revolutionary War, and in the 19th century the abolition movement against slavery was centered in
New England. Thoreau, Emerson, and Hawthorne are some of the intellectual descendants of the
Puritans.
20. Tidewater. Water overflowing land at flood tide; also, water, as in a river, affected by the ebb
and flow of the ocean tide.
21. Tobacco. This plant, when processed and smoked, chewed,or snuffed, imparts nicotine to the
user. Nicotine and related alkaloids of tobacco furnish habit-forming and narcotic effects which
account for tobacco's popularity. Cultivated initially by Indians in the new world (and used in their
peace pipes), John Rolfe of Jamestown discovered a method of fire-curing it which made it a cash
crop for the Virginia colony. Its great potential for profit led to the organization of enormous singlecrop plantations requiring large bodies of slave labor in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina.
Tobacco rapidly depletes the soil; this led to a shift of cultivation westward into Tennessee and
Kentucky, and with it slavery. They became the well-known cigarette companies of today. It is now
known that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer and heart disease.
22. West Indies. Located in the Caribbean Sea south of Florida and west of Central America, these
islands long played a crucial role in the new world. Spanish throughout the 16th century, England and
France staked out islands in the 1600s. Barbados was the most populated English settlement in the
17th century. The sugar plantations of the West Indies required importing huge slave populations
from Africa. Ships of New England transported goods to and from the West Indies; this became a
major source of wealth for the American colonies.
23. Winthrop, John (1606-1676). Leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Founding Boston in 1630.
He was elected governor of the colony 12 times. He saw the colony through its early crises.
Winthrop's personal journal, now known as "The History of New England," is an invaluable source for
the history of this early period.
24. Agitation. The state of being agitated (upset); the arousal of public interest in a cause or
controversial matter.
25. Belligerent. Inclined or eager to fight.
26. Cornwallis, Lord Charles (1738-1805). A British general who commanded troops throughout the
Revolutionary War. His most famous battles came against George Washington's forces in 1776. He is
also noted for his leadership in North Carolina, where he defeated Nathanael Greene in 1780, and for
his expedition into Virginia, where he surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, effectively ending the war.
27. Defiance. Bold resistance to an opposing force or authority; deliberately provocative behavior or
attitude.
28. Democratically. Of, marked by, or advocating democracy; relating to forms of government in
which representatives are elected by the people.
29. Enclaves. Sections within a larger area made up entirely of members of a minority group (loyalist
enclaves existed in the colonies; colonists were predominantly independence-minded).
30. Enlist. To sign up for military service; to register others for military service.
31. Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790). Statesman, author, inventor, and scientist, Franklin was a
central figure in the founding of the United States. His inventions included bifocal lenses, the
Franklin stove, and the lightning rod. He is also famous for his discovery of electricity, proving that
lightning is, in fact, electricity. Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence and was a
delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He was the only man to sign the Declaration of
Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain, and the
Constitution of the United States-four key documents in the founding of the United States.
32. Garrisoned. Established as a permanent military post.
33. Greene, Nathanael (1742-1786). Military general most noted for his leadership against the
British in North and South Carolina in 1780 to 1782. He was regarded as the second-best military
man of the Revolutionary period behind George Washington. He held several high-ranking positions
throughout his career, and today Greensboro, North Carolina is named for him.
34. Hancock, John (1737-1793). A wealthy Massachusetts businessman, John Hancock used his social
position to influence the independence movement. His influence was greatest in the Constitutional
Convention; he served as president from 1775 to 1777. He was the first person to sign the
Declaration of Independence of the United States with his now famous signature.
35. King George III (1738-1820). Ruler of Great Britain from 1760 to1810. Under his leadership,
the British lost the American colonies, but gained new territory in the form of Ireland.
36. Loyalists. American colonists who remained faithful to the British and supported their continued
rule over the colonies.
37. Mercenaries. Professional soldiers hired by a foreign country; in the Revolutionary War German
troops were hired to support the British effort in maintaining control of the colonies.
38. Militias. Military forces that are not part of a regular army.
39. Minutemen. Armed civilians ready to fight at a moment's notice; these people were key to the
American victory because of their ability to respond quickly to British attacks.
40. Proprietary colony. A colony that was owned and ruled by one person who was chosen by a king or
queen