American Settlers

As various nations develop, people migrate from many different places. When they arrive, those settlers have brought with them their cultures, ideas and beliefs. In the establishment of the United States, many colonists came from all over Europe. Although many of the settlers who began to colonize the Americas came for religious freedom in 1700, the beliefs and cultures were quite different. The groups of settlers who came to the Americas consisted of many different religions. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur said, “They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes…” (Crevecoeur). Crèvecœur noticed that there were a lot of different people that were living in the colonies. A lot of them had very different backgrounds. …show more content…
Within the various cultures, colonists brought religion or developed their own religions. Some of which included the Quakers, Puritans, Separatists, and the Anabaptists. All of these had different belief systems and ideas and arose from causes. The Quakers, or the Religious Society of Friends, arose in England in the mid-1600s. The Quakers got their name from the idea that they “quaked” when under deep emotion. The Quakers led a very simplistic lifestyle. This reflected in the way they dressed, spoke, and acted. The Quakers also refused to support taxes. They spoke up about it in their meetinghouses. Quakers had a very deep conviction. They believed in passive resistance. Occasionally they seemed to be stubborn and unreasonable. The Puritans were a very different religious group from the Quakers. They broke away during the Protestant Reformation and made their way to the Americas. One of their beliefs was that they needed to purify themselves of all the old Roman Catholic traditions. From the Puritans, another sect split from them, the Separatists led by Oliver Cromwell. This group made up the extreme Puritans. One of the fundamental …show more content…
Anne Hutchison was involved in the Antinomian Controversy that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. One of her beliefs was that God’s grace freed the colonists from observing moral precepts. Anne was opposed by John Winthrop and was tried and convicted of “traducing the ministers.” She was later banished and moved to New York. Those who followed her established their own settlement afterwards. Another dissenter was Roger Williams. Williams was a very popular Salem minister. He was an extreme Separatist who challenged the Bay Colony’s charter. Roger then went on to deny the authority of civil government. The Bay Colony banished Williams and fled to Rhode Island. From here, he established his own Baptist church which made Rhode Island more liberal than any other English settlement. Many other people who had similar ideas to Hutchison and Williams and moved to Rhode Island too. His colony became a refuge for religious