North American British colonies were divided into New England, Middle and Southern. The Chesapeake/ Virginia region was extremely well established and developed from the 1650's to 1763. They had great relations with their parent countries and flourished in trade. It was quite different form the Spanish and French colonies in North America.The British had a much larger population than the French who by the 1680's only had about 10,000 settlers compared to the British 40,000 in 1670. Population growth was mainly due to enhanced slavery trade. In Virginia slaves were seen as an investment being as the more slaves one had the more powerful he was seen in the public eye. Instead of trying to ...view middle of the document...
Virginia had no free public education system and in the Chesapeake settlement was so scattered about there were not many schools. For this time period, education was also based on your social class. Upper-class children had private tutors, middle-class pooled together to create schools, the poor sometimes received no education at all along with the blacks. Boys often received more education that girls. The College of William and Mary was founded in Virginia in 1693. This was the only other college in the British colonies besides Harvard and Yale. The school was established to educate young men in religion, convert Native Americans and train Anglican clergy. Until the 1720's the school did not offer college-level courses causing many elite families to continue to use private tutors and trips to Britain to obtain their education. After the 1720's American colleges included French, English literature, philosophy, science, mathematics, and natural philosophy. Medicine was also a growing practice, many men had formal education as doctors, then there were men who learned the craft as apprentices and also had the authority to prescribe drugs and perform small emergency surgery. Lastly were Midwives who attended childbirth, prescribed herbal remedies and treated illness.With few towns in Chesapeake the Anglican Church suffered immensely. Congregations were so spread out that it created great obstacles for the ministers to meet spiritual needs of their followers. There were only about half of the Anglican churches that had regular preachers. Planters lost interest in converting their slaves who kept and passed on African traditions to their children. Few Presbyterians and Quakers worshiped openly due to the colonies laws against nonconformity. In the 1750's the Baptist revivals entered Virginia. They appealed mostly to white farm families and enslaved blacks. They did not have churches and met in fields and homes. Anyone was welcome to worship, women and slaves and no college training was required. These revivals caused communities to split into two groups called New Lights and Old Lights. New Lights not only challenged political authority in the area but they also challenged religious authority.Population in the British colonies rose from 472,000 to 1.600,000 between 1720 to 1760 due to natural growth and new arrivals of immigrants. Cultural diversity also began to grow in Virginia as Germans and Scots-Irish immigrated in to the colonies. They brought with them their own ideas, beliefs, skills and ways of life that differed...
