Who Founded Each of the 13 Original Colonies?
At the start of the 17th century, three colonial powers — France, Spain, and England — were competing for dominion in North America. Despite arriving later than their rivals, it was the British who finally took control. Within a century and a half, they had created 13 flourishing colonies on the Atlantic coast — the same 13 colonies that eventually broke away from British rule during the American Revolutionary War.
Each of these colonies was established for distinct reasons, reflecting the religious beliefs, economic interests, or social ethics of their founders. Here’s a look at who founded each of America’s original 13 colonies.
Virginia
Virginia was founded by the Virginia Company of London, which was chartered by Britain’s King James I. The company set sail from England with three ships in 1606 and arrived the following year with 104 people. On May 13, 1607, the company established Jamestown — named after the king — as its first settlement, which became the first permanent English settlement in North America.
Massachusetts
Two key events led to Massachusetts’ foundation. The first was the creation of Plymouth Colony, established in 1620 by the Pilgrims, a group of 100 or so people who set sail from England on the Mayflower in search of religious freedom. A decade later, the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by the Massachusetts Bay Company, which had obtained a charter from King Charles I. Later, in 1691, Plymouth Colony was merged into Massachusetts Bay.
You may also like
More from our network
New Hampshire
New Hampshire was founded by the English merchant Captain John Mason, who had received the region in a series of grants made by the English crown. It was developed as a fishing and trading settlement in 1623, and was given the name “New Hampshire” in 1629 after Mason’s home county of Hampshire, England.
New York
New York began life as New Amsterdam, a settlement founded by the Dutch West India Company in 1624. Over the next 40 years, the Dutch established the colony as a successful trading post and commercial center — but then the Brits showed up. They conquered the colony in 1664, and New Amsterdam — along with the wider colonial territory of New Netherland — passed to British control. The area was renamed “New York” after James II, Duke of York, the son of King Charles I.
Connecticut
The Connecticut Colony was founded in 1636 by Thomas Hooker, an influential British clergyman and theologian. Hooker left the Massachusetts Bay Colony due to disagreements with its Puritan leadership. He and his followers moved to modern-day Connecticut, where they founded the settlement of Hartford.
Rhode Island
In 1635, the Puritan minister Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts Bay for his radical religious and political views, which included his firm belief in the separation of church and state. The following year, Williams set out for Narragansett Bay, where he purchased land from the Narragansett Indians and founded the town of Providence and the colony of Rhode Island. Providence emerged as a hub of religious tolerance and democratic governance, and became a refuge for people persecuted for their religious beliefs.
Delaware
Delaware had the most chaotic founding of all the 13 colonies. The Dutch founded the first European settlement in the area in 1631, but it was soon destroyed by Indigenous peoples following a disagreement between the two groups. In 1638, Swedish settlers, led by merchant and politician Peter Minuit (famous for having founded New Amsterdam), built the next permanent settlement in Delaware, which was then taken by the Dutch in 1655. The colony was later seized by the English in 1664, and in 1681 came under the control of William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. Though he was not the colony’s original founder, it was Penn who shaped Delaware into the state we know today.
Maryland
Maryland was founded in 1634 by Cecilius Calvert, who was a Catholic in Protestant England before traveling to America. He envisioned the colony of Maryland as a haven where his fellow Roman Catholics could escape the restrictions placed on them in Britain. As it turned out, relatively few English Catholics made the long voyage across the Atlantic. But the colony did attract a large number of Protestant dissenters, such as Quakers and Puritans, and ended up being a place of great religious diversity.
North Carolina
The English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh established the first settlement in North Carolina in 1585. But the majority of the settlers fled within a year due to conflicts with the Indigenous population. It wasn’t until 1663 that the first successful, permanent colony in the area was established by the “Lords Proprietors,” a group of eight English noblemen who were granted a royal charter by King Charles II to establish and govern what was then known as the Province of Carolina.
South Carolina
South Carolina, like North Carolina, emerged from the same Province of Carolina founded by the eight Lords Proprietors in 1663. The sprawling and sparsely populated colony of Carolina was hard to govern, which is why it was split into two separate colonies — North Carolina and South Carolina — in 1712.
New Jersey
The first permanent European settlement in what is now New Jersey was established by the Dutch at Bergen (now Jersey City) in 1660, and was originally part of the wider New Netherland colony. After the English conquest of New Amsterdam, the territory was split up. The Duke of York granted a section of the colony to two English noblemen and close friends of King Charles II, Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, who founded New Jersey in 1664.
Pennsylvania
In 1681, King Charles II granted William Penn — an English Quaker leader and advocate of religious freedom — the charter for a large territory in North America as a way to pay off a debt the king owed to Penn’s father. A year later, Penn set foot in the new colony of Pennsylvania. Penn called the colony a “holy experiment,” envisioning a place that emphasized religious tolerance, fair treatment of Indigenous peoples, and democratic participation. As such, Pennsylvania attracted an array of settlers from across Europe, including those seeking religious freedom.
Georgia
Georgia, the last of the 13 colonies, was founded in 1732 by English army officer and philanthropist James Oglethorpe and a group of 20 associates. In the British House of Commons, Oglethorpe had earned a reputation as a champion of the oppressed. He took this ethos to Georgia, which he saw as a place that could offer a new life to poor and debt-ridden settlers. The colony was also intended as a military buffer between British-controlled South Carolina and Spanish-controlled Florida — a role well suited to Oglethorpe’s background in the army.
