IMPORTANT PEOPLE
Terms
undefined, object
copy deck
- GEORGE WHITEFIELD
- preacher in the Church of England and one of the leaders of the Methodist movement.
- PHILLIS WHEATLEY
- the first published African American poet whose writings helped create the genre of African American literature.
- WILLIAM BRADFORD
- a leader of the separatist settlers of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, and was elected thirty times to be the Governor after John Carver died.
- JOHN WINTHROP
- led a group of English Puritans to the New World, joined the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629 and was elected their governor in October 1629.
- WILLIAM BERKELEY
- Governor of Virginia,
- FATHER JUNIPERO SERA
- a Spanish Franciscan friar who founded the mission chain in Alta California.
- CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
- a navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere.
- JOHN DICKINSON
- an American lawyer and politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware. He was a militia officer during the American Revolution
- JOHN BARTRAM
- an early American botanist and horticulturalist. Carolus Linnaeus said he was the "greatest natural botanist in the world."
- JOHN DAVENPORT
- puritan clergyman and co-founder of the American colony of New Haven.
- HERNADO CORTES
- Spanish conquistador who led the expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the King of Castile, in the early 16th century. Cortés
- THOMAS HOOKER
- prominent Puritan religious and colonial leader remembered as probably the pre-eminent founder of the Colony of Connecticut.
- BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
- As a scientist he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and a musical instrument
- THOMAS PAINE
- His principal contribution was the powerful, widely-read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), advocating colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and of The American Crisis (1776-1783), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series.
- JAMES OTIS
- a lawyer in colonial Massachusetts who was an early advocate of the political views that led to the American Revolution.
- JOHN PETER ZENGER
- His indictment, trial and acquittal on sedition and libel charges against the Governor William Cosby of the New York Colony in 1735, with the noted lawyer Andrew Hamilton acting in his defense were important contributing factors to the development of freedom of the press in America.
- JOHNATHAN EDWARDS
- colonial American Congregational preacher, theologian, and missionary to Native Americans
- WILLIAM PENN
- founder and
- AMERIGO VESPUCCI
- the first person to demonstrate that the New World discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 was not the eastern appendage of Asia, but rather a previously-unknown
- ANNE HUTCHINSON
- unauthorized Puritan minister of a dissident church discussion group and a pioneer settler in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Netherlands.
- SAMUEL ADAMS
- an American statesman, politician, writer and political philosopher, brewer, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
- SIR EDMUND ANDROS
- early colonial governor in North America, and head of the short-lived Dominion of New England.
- JAMES OGLETHORPE
- British general, a philanthropist, and was the founder of the colony of Georgia
- JOHN SMITH
- He was a leader of the Virginia Colony (based at Jamestown) between 1607 and 1609, and led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay.
- FRANCISCO PIZARRO
- Spanish conquistador, conqueror of the Incan Empire and founder of Lima, the modern-day capital of Peru.
- JOHN ROLFE
- early English settlers of North America. He is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco as an export crop in the Colony of Virginia and is known as the husband of Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Confederacy.
- ROGER WILLIAMS
- an English theologian, a notable proponent of religious toleration and the separation of church and state, and an advocate for fair dealings with Native Americans.
- JOHN LOCKE
- considered the first of the British Empiricists, but is equally important to social contract theory