1607 – Beginning of Colonial Immigration; English Settlers Arrive in America

“[T]he settlement on the James River in 1607 marked the beginning of a nation–a nation that was certainly English in its foundation, whatever may be said of the superstructure. Virginia, New England, Maryland, the Carolinas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Georgia were begun by Englishmen; and New England, Virginia, and Maryland remained almost entirely English throughout the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth. ‘Foreigners’ began early to straggle into the colonies. But not until the eighteenth century was well under way did they come in appreciable numbers, and even then the great bulk of these non-English newcomers were from the British Isles, of Welsh, Scotch, Irish, and Scotch-Irish extraction.”