Population in the thirteen colonies rose from about 250,000 in 1700 to approximately 2.5 million by the mid- 1770s.
The population of African Americans increased at an even faster rate—from about 28,000 to more than 500,000.
Immigration—the permanent moving of people into one country from other countries—was important to this growth.
Between 1607 and 1775, an estimated 690,000 Europeans came to the colonies. Also during this time, traders brought in 278,000 enslaved Africans to the colonies.
Colonial women tended to marry early and have large families.
In addition, the colonies—especially New England—turned out to be a very healthy place to live compared to other parts of the world.
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Struggles
Women often died in childbirth.
Outbreaks of serious diseases such as smallpox were common.
Many people died in epidemics, outbreaks that affect large numbers of people.
smallpox epidemic in the city of Bostonkilled about 850 people, or 15 percent of the city's population
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Family roles
Men were the heads of the households.
managed the farm or business
represented the family in the community.
Sons might work as indentured servants or become apprentices.
An apprentice agrees to work with a skilled craftsperson as a way of learning a trade
Women ran their households and cared for children.
Many worked in the fields with their husbands.
Married women had few rights and could not vote.
Unmarried women might work as maids or cooks.
Widows and older women who never married might work as teachers, nurses, or seamstresses.
They could run businesses and own property, but they could not vote.
Even children as young as four or five often had jobs.
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Colonial education
Most colonists valued education.
Parents often taught their children to read and write at home.
New England and Pennsylvania, people set up schools to make sure everyone could read and study the Bible.
In 1647 the Massachusetts Puritanspassed a public education law requiring communities with 50 or more homes to have a public school.
The result was a high level of literacy in New England.
By 1750, about 85 percent of the men and about half of the women were able to read.
Most schools in the Middle Colonies were private.
Craftspeople often set up night schools for their apprentices.
The earliest colleges in the colonies were founded to train ministers.
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The great awakening
Religion had a strong influence in colonial life.
In the 1730s and 1740s, a religious revival called the Great Awakening swept through the colonies.
called for "a new birth," a return to the strong faith of earlier days.
Minister Jonathan Edwards of Massachusetts, gave powerful and convincing sermons.
George Whitefield, an English preacher who arrived in the colonies in 1739, inspired worshipers in churches and open fields from New England to Georgia.
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The Great Awakening inspired greater religious freedom.
Led to formation of many new types of churches.
The new churches placed an emphasis on having personal faith rather than on church rituals.
More colonists began choosing their own faiths, and the strength of established official churches declined.
<<As a Baptist preacher noted soon after the Great Awakening, "the common people now claim as good a right to judge and act in matters of religion as civil rulers or the learned clergy.">>
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The enlightenment
Many educated colonists were also influenced by the Enlightenment.
This movement, which began in Europe, spread the idea that knowledge, reason, and science could improve society.
In the colonies, the Enlightenment increased interest in science.
People observed nature, staged experiments, and published their findings, much as Benjamin Franklin did.
The Enlightenment also promoted freedom of thought and expression, a belief in equality, and the idea of popular government.
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Ideas of freedom
Freedom of the press became an important issue in colonial America.
Newspapers in colonial cities, carried political news and often faced government censorship.
Censorship is the banning of printed materials because they contain unpopular or offensive ideas.
In 1733 publisher John Peter Zenger, in his newspaper the New-York Weekly Journal, accused New York's governor of corruption.
For criticizing the governor, officials charged Zenger with a crime and threw him in jail.
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Zenger argued that the statements written about the governor were true.
Claimed he had the right to publish them.
Zenger's lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, said:
"The loss of liberty in general would soon follow the suppression of the liberty of the press; for it is an essential branch of liberty, so perhaps it is the best preservative of the whole."
The jury found Zenger not guilty.
The case is seen as a key step in the development of a free press in this country.