Thirteen Colonies Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
98 free Thirteen Colonies trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
From Jamestown in 1607 to Georgia in 1732, the thirteen colonies grew from two thousand settlers to nearly two and a half million people before they declared independence. These 98 questions cover who founded each colony and why, how they were governed, what they traded, and the taxes and acts that pushed them toward revolution. The mix runs from classroom basics (which colony was first? which was last?) to sharper details: the Dominion of New England, the Albany Plan, the colonial colleges, and why Rhode Island got its royal charter. Every answer is sourced, so it works for a history class, a homeschool unit or a pub quiz round on colonial America.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which was the first of the thirteen colonies to be established?
Virginia
Jamestown was founded in 1607 by the London Company; Georgia, the last, came in 1732.
Q 02Which colony, chartered in 1732, completed the thirteen?
Georgia
Georgia was planted on land that Spain also claimed, partly so that its settlers could shield South Carolina from attack out of Spanish Florida.
Q 03How many of the thirteen colonies were traditionally grouped as New England colonies?
4
New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Connecticut; the Middle Colonies also numbered four and the South five.
Q 04Which of these was one of the Middle Colonies?
New Jersey
New Jersey lay in the most mixed region of British America, where settlers came from so many nations and churches that no single faith could dominate.
Q 05The Middle Colonies were established on the land of which former European colony?
New Netherland
Richard Nicolls captured lightly defended New Amsterdam in 1664 and the rest of the Dutch colony quickly followed.
Q 06Which monarch granted charters to the Plymouth Company and London Company in 1606?
James I
James I chartered both companies in 1606; the London Company's settlers named Jamestown for him, while the Plymouth Company's northern outpost at Sagadahoc was abandoned within about a year.
Q 07Which cash crop, pioneered by John Rolfe, saved England's struggling first permanent American colony?
Tobacco
Tobacco rescued the colony: in 1612 Rolfe swapped the bitter local leaf for sweeter Spanish seed, giving the settlers their first product that sold well in England.
Q 08Who received the 1632 charter for the Province of Maryland?
Lord Baltimore
Lord Baltimore here was Cecil Calvert: his father George, who had sought the grant as a refuge for Catholics, died two months before it was sealed, so the son sent his brother Leonard to govern.
Q 09On what ship did the Pilgrims sail to America in 1620?
Mayflower
The Mayflower was meant to sail with the Speedwell, but the smaller ship proved so leaky that it was twice forced back to port, and all 102 passengers crossed on one vessel.
Q 10Before sailing for America, the Pilgrims had first moved to which country?
Netherlands
They were Puritan separatists who wanted physical distance from a Church of England they saw as corrupted.
Q 11Who founded Providence Plantations in 1636 after being banished from Massachusetts Bay?
Roger Williams
Roger Williams had angered the Puritan leaders by arguing that the king's patent was worthless and only purchase from the Native owners gave title; he bought his new settlement's land from the Narragansett.
Q 12Which woman, banished from Massachusetts Bay for her religious teaching, helped found Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island in 1638?
Anne Hutchinson
Anne Hutchinson was tried in 1637 for holding meetings that criticised the colony's ministers; banished, she and her followers settled on Aquidneck the following year.
Q 13Which Quaker founded a colony in 1681 and named its capital for 'brotherly love'?
William Penn
Q 21Which king granted Carolina in 1663 to eight nobles who had helped restore him to the throne?
Charles II
Charles II rewarded eight loyal supporters with the grant; their colonists founded Charles Town, now Charleston, in 1670, naming it for him, and moved it to its present site in 1680.
Q 22In what year did the king make North and South Carolina separate crown colonies?
1729
The province had been split into two proprietary colonies in 1712 after years of feuding among the proprietors' heirs.
Q 23Which English settlement was found deserted in 1590, with 'CROATOAN' carved on a post?
Roanoke Colony
Roanoke Colony's governor John White sailed home for supplies in 1587 and was kept away for three years by the war with the Spanish Armada; he returned to find the hundred-odd settlers gone.
William Penn proposed calling the land Sylvania, Latin for woods; the king changed it to Pennsylvania in honour of the founder's late father, Admiral Sir William Penn.
Q 14Which member of Parliament founded a southern colony for England's poor?
James Oglethorpe
James Oglethorpe led the first settlers ashore himself in 1733; his fellow trustees banned both slavery and rum, but after years of complaints from settlers both bans had been lifted by 1751.
Q 15Oglethorpe's colony was meant as an alternative to what English institution?
Debtors' prisons
The trustees' charter was dated June 9, 1732; they gave it up in 1752.
Q 16Which Dutch colonial director is credited with buying Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626?
Peter Minuit
Peter Minuit paid in trade goods, not coin: the earliest record, a 1626 letter by Pieter Schaghen, says the island was bought 'for the value of 60 guilders'.
Q 17Which country's 1638 Delaware Valley colony named its fort for Queen Christina?
Sweden
Sweden's settlers, a mix of Swedes and Finns, named Fort Christina for their child queen; the Dutch besieged the fort and absorbed the colony in 1655.
Q 18Which English commander captured New Amsterdam in 1664?
Richard Nicolls
The 1667 Treaty of Breda confirmed English control; the Dutch gave up their claim for good at Westminster in 1674.
Q 19What did the Dutch rename New York City when they briefly recaptured it in 1673?
New Orange
New Orange honoured the Prince of Orange, the Dutch leader of the day; the name lasted barely a year, because a peace treaty handed the city back to England in 1674.
Q 20The two Jerseys, East and West, were reunited as one province in which year?
1702
Both had been created in 1674 from lands that were formerly part of New York.
Q 24Which king merged the New England colonies into a single dominion, shortly before losing his own throne?
James II
James II wanted one obedient government in place of several self-governing colonies; the Dominion of New England, set up in 1686, fell apart in 1689, months after he lost his crown.
Q 25Legend says Hartford colonists hid their charter from Governor Andros in 1687 inside what?
Hollow oak
Hollow oak, the legend goes: the candles blew out during a tense meeting with the governor, and when they were relit the charter was gone, hidden in the tree later revered as the Charter Oak.
Q 26Which present-day state was governed as part of Massachusetts until 1820?
Maine
Maine voted to leave Massachusetts and entered the Union in 1820 as a free state, paired with slave-holding Missouri under the Missouri Compromise.
Q 27About how many people lived in the thirteen colonies on the eve of the American Revolution?
2.5 million
2.5 million is the Census Bureau's estimate for July 1776; Benjamin Franklin had reckoned in 1751 that cheap land let colonists marry young and at least double their numbers every 25 years.
Q 28By 1770, the thirteen colonies produced what share of the British Empire's economic output?
40 percent
More than 90 percent of colonists were farmers, yet Philadelphia, New York and Boston each topped 16,000 people by 1760.
Q 29Under which economic doctrine did Britain require its colonies to trade mainly inside the British Empire?
Mercantilism
Mercantilism treated colonies as suppliers of raw materials and captive buyers of finished goods; the Navigation Acts enforced it, and colonists answered with widespread smuggling.
Q 30Which 1754 gathering saw Benjamin Franklin propose a unified colonial government?
Albany Congress
The Albany Congress adopted Franklin's plan of union, but the colonial assemblies rejected it; his 'Join, or Die' snake cartoon was published to rally support for the idea.