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In What Order Were the 13 American Colonies Established?
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Proclamation of 1763: boundary line Timeline of the 13 American colonies
Proclamation of 1763: boundary line
Proclamation of 1763: boundary line The 13 American colonies in 1775, with the Proclamation of 1763 boundary line.

In What Order Were the 13 American Colonies Established?

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Written by
Michael Ray
Michael Ray is an assistant managing editor who has worked at Britannica since 2003. In addition to leading the Geography and History team, he oversees coverage of European history and military affairs....
Michael Ray
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On May 14, 1607, approximately 105 colonists of the Virginia Company settled on a peninsula on the James River. There they founded Jamestown, Britain’s first foothold in the New World and the first capital of what would become Virginia. What followed was a scramble for territory on what is now the East Coast of the United States as other European powers sought to establish their own North American colonies. In the end, the British would emerge victorious. They wrested Delaware, New York, and New Jersey from the Dutch, checked the Spanish advance from Florida by establishing a presence in Georgia, and seized France’s vast holdings in the wake of the French and Indian War.

The history of the colonial era is often compressed in the popular consciousness, with a sequence of main events that consists of Jamestown (1607), Plymouth colony (1620), and the American Revolution (1775–83). This glosses over the massive changes to colonial society in the pre-Revolutionary years and obscures the significant passage of time between these milestones. The number of years between the founding of Jamestown and the Declaration of Independence (1776) is the same as that separating the Declaration of Independence from the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945).

The 13 American colonies ordered by date of founding
  1. Virginia (1607)
  4. New York (founded by the Netherlands in 1624; captured by Britain in 1664)
  5. Maryland (1634)
  8. Delaware (1638)
  9. New Jersey (founded by the Netherlands in 1660; captured by Britain in 1664)
  10. North Carolina (established as Carolina in 1663; divided into North and South Carolina in 1712)
  11. South Carolina (established as Carolina in 1663; divided into North and South Carolina in 1712)
  13. Georgia (1733)
Michael Ray