Show Off Your Knowledge of Colonial America

Taverns were more than just places to drink — they were social centers, performance halls, and meeting rooms. Magistrates were particularly open to giving women tavern licenses, and even tax and land incentives to operate. Women tavern keepers often worked from rooms rented out of plantation houses along rural routes, and the job was often passed down from mother to daughter.

Because the colonies were established at different times and by different people, various coins, commodities, and notes circulated as money — there was no uniform currency. However, the most common coin was the silver Spanish dollar in the form of coins known as “ocho reales” (“pieces of eight”), which came to the colonies through trade with the West Indies and Mexico.

Popular in Pennsylvania, scrapple is a loaf of meat typically made from flour, ground pork, pork organs, and spices. The dish, which is often fried for breakfast, was created from foods brought to the U.S. by German and Swiss immigrants in the 17th and 18th centuries. The word “scrapple” is derived from the German word “panhaskröppe,” a combination of the words "panaas" (“pan rabbit”) and "skröppel" (“slice of”).

Puritan colonies had many sumptuary laws to restrict excessive personal expenditures such as household equipment, food, drinks, and clothing. These laws, which were built on moral and religious grounds, enforced simplicity and preserved class differences. For example, in 1634, Massachusetts Bay banned “new fashions, or long hair, or anything of the like nature,” and in the 1650s, only people with over 200 pounds to their estates could wear certain expensive accessories.

In 1735, well-known lawyer Andrew Hamilton defended German printer John Peter Zenger, who had published attacks against a royal governor. In Zenger’s defense, Hamilton demanded the prosecution prove the claims false and famously stated that this case was “not the cause of one poor printer, but the cause of liberty.” The jury delivered a “not guilty” verdict after 10 minutes of deliberation, and the origins of the First Amendment became enshrined in American history.

Known by many names, including Metacom, Metacomet, and Philip of Pokanoket, King Philip was leader of the Wampanoag during the First Indian War (1675-1676). The conflict was a last-ditch offensive against English colonization, though some Native tribes, such as the Mohegan and Mohawk, fought for the English. The war effectively ended after King Philip was killed in the summer of 1676.

The Iroquois Confederacy, self-name Haudenosaunee, was an alliance of five (and later six) tribes spread across New York, which included the Oneida, Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Tuscarora (which joined in 1722). The group was an important player in the colonial struggle between Britain and France in North America and sided with the British during the French and Indian War.

As a counterreaction to the rise of the European Age of Reason in the 18th century, Christian missionaries who were invigorated by the introduction of Calvinism passionately preached throughout the colonies and ignited the historical event known today as “the Great Awakening.” Although an outlier of religious fervor, a second Great Awakening also occurred during the early 19th century among Methodist and Baptist churches.

Before the name "apple" became widespread, the crispy autumn fruit was actually called a "winter banana” in 17th-century America. Today, the delightful nomenclature refers to a variety of sweet golden apples originating in the Midwestern United States.

Connecticut’s official nickname is the “Constitution State,” but one of its unofficial nicknames is the “Nutmeg State,” and people who live there are sometimes called “Nutmeggers.” The origins of the nickname may date back to the colonial era, when Connecticut merchants imported nutmeg from the “Spice Islands,” now known as the Maluku Islands of Indonesia.

Rhode Island's economically advantageous location made its merchants and traders even more willing to break ties with England than the other colonies. The small colony of Rhode Island declared its independence on May 4, 1776, two months before the other 12 colonies decided to follow suit.

The first English child born in the New World, Virginia Dare, was named after her birthplace: the colony of Virginia. Her parents left England in 1587 and landed on Roanoke Island. Virginia, the granddaughter of Roanoke governor John White, was born a few months after the arrival. A year later, the entire colony had vanished without a trace except the word “CROATOAN” carved into a tree.

Pennsylvania was created when William Penn asked King Charles II for a colony in the New World instead of repaying a 16,000-pound debt he owed Penn's deceased father. Penn established the new colony as a haven for Quakers and other Christians looking for a tolerant place to live.

Founded by James Oglethorpe in 1732, Georgia was originally intended to act as a buffer to protect South Carolina from invasion by Spanish settlers in Florida. The colony was much larger than the current state; it extended farther west into modern-day Alabama and Mississippi.

Colonial America was an agricultural, pre-industrial society. According to the first U.S. census, which was taken in 1790, farmers made up 90% of the population. Northerners farmed a wide variety of crops such as barley, wheat, and oats, and also raised cattle, swine, and sheep. In the South, tobacco was the dominant crop.

Although enslavers themselves in the early colonial era, Quakers were among the first groups to denounce the practice of slavery. In April 1688, four members of the Society of Friends denounced the “traffick of men-body” in a public petition. The most remarkable Quaker abolitionist, however, was Benjamin Lay, who railed against those who enslaved his fellow man until his death in 1759.

The British called Northern colonists “Yankees,” after “Janke,” a diminutive of the Dutch name “Jan” and a reference to the many Dutch settlers. A “doodle” was a silly person or country hick. The words were used together by British doctor Richard Schuckburg around 1755 for the song “Yankee Doodle,” which mocked American colonists for trying to be fashionable. The colonists later used it as a patriotic song.

Winston Churchill once described the Seven Years’ War as “the first world war.” The treaty that ended the War of Austrian Succession in 1748 sowed the seeds for renewed conflict among world powers. Although Britain emerged victorious in North America, the cost of the war led to increased taxation on its colonies, a move that eventually ignited the American Revolution.

John Smith published “The Generall Historie of Virginia” in 1629, Anne Bradstreet was perhaps the most famous poet in colonial America, and William Bradford is known as the “father of American history” thanks to his “Of Plymouth Plantation” (1651). Peter Stuyvesant, the controversial Dutch governor of New Amsterdam, wasn’t known for his exceptional literary powers.

First known as the Loyal Nine, the Sons of Liberty formed in Boston, Massachusetts, in protest to the Stamp Act and prompted the famous protest motto “No taxation without representation.” Although the Stamp Act was repealed a year later, the Sons of Liberty had by then formed a network of patriots throughout the colonies and pushed the continent ever closer to revolution.

The creation of bifocals is credited to American founding father and prolific inventor Benjamin Franklin. In 1784, Franklin wrote to his friend that he was “happy in the invention of double spectacles, which serving for distant objects as well as near ones, make my eyes as useful to me as ever they were." Documents point to members of Franklin’s circle wearing them as far back as the 1760s.

It’s easy to think of the colonies as a solely British possession, but a patchwork of European countries once laid claim to what is now the United States. The Spanish possessed land in the South, the French made their influence felt in the West, and even the Dutch had a small foothold in what is now New York City. The Dutch West India Company founded the colony in 1624 and relinquished control to the English 40 years later.

Picture any 18th-century gentleman, whether an English aristocrat or a freedom-loving patriot, and they’re likely wearing a tricorne hat. Named after the triangular hat’s three corners, the accessory represented an aristocratic ideal both on and off the battlefield. Eventually, the hat fell out of fashion and was replaced by the top hat by the first decade of the 19th century.

Twenty years before the first English colony of Roanoke was founded, the Spanish established St. Augustine, the first permanently inhabited European settlement in what would later be the United States. In 1565, Spanish explorer Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles landed in Florida and named the new settlement after the patron saint of brewers. Today, St. Augustine is the oldest occupied city in the U.S.

In the spring of 1692, several young girls from Salem, Massachusetts, announced that they were possessed by the devil and accused local women of witchcraft. A months-long panic took hold in Salem, and more than 150 people were accused of the crime, with 19 people executed. In 1693, the witchcraft suspects were pardoned, and 18 years later, legislation was passed to restore the good names of the condemned.

Four of the first five U.S. Presidents hailed from Virginia: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. In total, eight Presidents have been born in this original colony. Ohio is next, with seven Presidents, followed by New York, with five.

Intending to land near the mouth of the Hudson River in New York, the Mayflower encountered a series of storms that caused it to veer north. The crew finally caught sight of Cape Cod on the morning of November 9, 1620. They still wanted to head south, but rough seas forced them to make landfall. They spent the next few weeks exploring Cape Cod, and decided on the town of Plymouth as the location for their settlement.

Both Virginia and West Virginia were named by the British explorer Sir Walter Raleigh to honor Queen Elizabeth I, who served as England’s monarch from 1558 to 1603. Queen Elizabeth I was called the “Virgin Queen” because she never married. She honored Sir Walter Raleigh with a charter to establish a colony in the Americas, and he thanked her by dubbing it the Virginia Colony.