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1580      Massasoit (Ousamequin) is born

1600      King Charles I of England born

1604      William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Othello” was first performed

1607      Virginia Company of London settles 120 colonists in Virginia

1608      Champlain founds a French settlement in Quebec

1610      Henry Hudson discovers Hudson’s Bay; Galileo sees the moons of Jupiter through his telescope

1611      King James Bible published

1612      Dutch use Manhattan for fur trading; first tobacco planted in Jamestown

1614      Pocahontas marries John Rolfe in Jamestown and sails to England in 1616

1616      European traders bring yellow fever to Indigenous people in New England; Shakespeare dies

1618      Thirty Years’ War begins in central Europe

1619      First African enslaved people brought to Virginia

1620      Pilgrims sail from England, sign Plymouth Compact, and found Plymouth Colony in December

1621      Myles Standish appointed Commander of Plimoth; Wampanoag Treaty signed on March 22nd; Winslow visits Sowams

1622      William Bradford becomes governor of Plimoth Colony until 1652

1623      First English settlement established at Little Harbor, NH; Winslow cures Massasoit at Sowams

1624      England declares war on Spain; Dutch settle New Amsterdam (New York)

1625      Charles I of England and Scotland succeeds King James I

1626      Naumkea (later Salem) settled by Roger Conant

1629      King Charles I disolves Parliament; Massachusetts Bay Company issued a charter in London

1630      John Winthrop and 1,000 Puritans land at Boston; Warwick Patent granted to William Bradford

1631      Dutch West India Company settles at the Delaware River; first ship built in Massachusetts; Taj Mahal construction begun

1632      Trading post built in Sowams; John Eliot starts missionary work with Native people in Massachusetts; Maryland settled

1633      Massasoit flees to Plimoth to escape capture by the Narragansetts; Edward Winslow becomes Plimoth Colony governor

1635      Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield, Connecticut settled by people from the Massachusetts Bay Colony

1636      Roger Williams, banished from Salem, MA travels to Sowams, and settles Providence; Harvard College founded

1637      Pequot War begins; colonial forces kill 300-700 Pequot including women and children

1638      Anne Hutchinson banished from Boston, settles in Portsmouth, RI; Sowamset granted to Bradford; Metacomet is born

1639      Massasoit renews original treaty with Plimoth; first printing press in North America operates in Cambridge

1640      Massachusetts Bay Colony population grows to 20,000; Taunton purchased by John Brown and others

1641      Rehoboth, a tract “eight miles square”, but actually ten, purchased

1642      English Civil War begins (ends in 1646); Harvard College hold its first commenement

1643      Uncas kills Miantonomi; New England Confederation formed; Key Into Language of Americas published by Rgr. Williams

1644      Roger Williams submits the Narragansetts’s act of submission to the English King

1645      Wannamoisett (present day Barrington and East Providence) purchased from Massasoit by John Brown

1648      Ninigret becomes head of Narragansett and Eastern Niantic confederation

1649      Charles I beheaded; England declared a Commonwealth; Society of Friends’ George Fox begins preaching in England

1650      Harvard College granted charter

1651      John Sassamon appointed schoolmaster of John Eliot’s praying town in Natick, MA

1652      Maine joined to Massachusetts Bay Colony

1653      Sowams purchased; John Eliot prints first Algonkian language book; John Sassamon attends Harvard College

1658      Rampage against Quakers in Connecticut and Long Island; Oliver Cromwell dies; Puritan government collapses

1661      Massasoit Ousamequin dies at 80; Wamsutta (Alexander) succeeds him; Mashpee designated as a “Praying Town”

1661      Rehoboth North Purchase (Attleborough, North Attleborough, & Cumberland); John Eliot translates Bible into Algonkian

1662      Alexander dies; Metacomet (Philip) succeeds him; Sassamon becomes Philip’s interpreter; Philip renews Massasoit treaty

1664      British annex New Netherlands from Connecticut to Delaware; New Amsterdam renamed NY; Newton discovers gravity

1665      Great Plague of London begins, killing 68,596

1666      French and Dutch declare war on England; Great Fire of London

1667      First Baptist Church in America established at Nockum Hill, Barrington, RI

1668      New Meadow Neck in Barrington purchased as part of the Sowams deed

1669      Hugh Cole purchases 500 acres of land in Swansea on the west side of Cole’s River (Touisset)

1670      Hudson’s Bay Company incorporated by royal charter

1673      Present-day Warren purchased from Totomommuck by Swansea

1675      King Philip War begins in present day Warren on June 19th; Nearly 1,000 killed at Great Swamp massacre in December

1676      King Philip War ends with the death of Philip on August 12th and the capture of Anawan on August 28th

1676      Increase Mather publishes The Troubles That Have Happened in New England in London

1679      New Hampshire becomes a Royal Colony

1682      William Penn founds Pennsylvania as a refuge for Quakers

1684      Massachusetts Bay charter revoked; Massachusetts becomes a Royal Colony

1685      Charles II of England dies and is succeeded by brother James II (who will be overthrown in 1688)

1690      King William’s War (ends in 1697); first paper money issued by the colony of Massachusetts

1692      Nineteen people tried and hanged as witches in Salem, MA

1698      Papermaking begins in North America

1699      French settlers move into Mississippi and Louisiana