Colonial America Flashcards

Grade 5 · Social Studies · Flashcards

Essential vocabulary and facts about life in the thirteen colonies.

Flashcards

Jamestown: First permanent English settlement in North America, founded in Virginia in 1607.
New England Colonies: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire; economy focused on fishing, trade, and shipbuilding.
Middle Colonies: New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware; called the 'breadbasket' for grain farming.
Southern Colonies: Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia; economy based on plantations and cash crops.
Plantation: A large farm in the South growing cash crops such as tobacco or rice, worked by enslaved people.
House of Burgesses: Virginia's elected assembly established in 1619 — the first representative legislative body in colonial America.
Mayflower Compact: 1620 agreement among Pilgrim settlers to create a self-governing community; an early model of democratic government.
Cash crop: A crop grown mainly to sell for profit rather than to feed one's own family, such as tobacco or rice.
Puritan: A strict Protestant group that settled New England seeking to 'purify' the church; their values shaped colonial law.
Pilgrim: Separatist settlers who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 seeking religious freedom, landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts.