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50 free Thirteen Colonies trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 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 50 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
James Oglethorpe and fellow trustees secured the royal charter on June 9, 1732.
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
The Middle Colonies were New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, carved from the former Dutch New Netherland.
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 king granted charters to the Plymouth Company and London Company in 1606?
James I
The London Company's Jamestown survived; the Plymouth Company's Popham Colony on the Kennebec River lasted barely a year.
Q 07Jamestown survived its brutal early years by turning to which cash crop?
Tobacco
The London Virginia Company had been looking for gold and found little; disease and starvation killed many early settlers.
Q 08Who received the 1632 charter for the Province of Maryland?
Lord Baltimore
Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, got it from Charles I; his father had been a prominent Catholic official who encouraged Catholic emigration.
Q 09On what ship did the Pilgrims sail to America in 1620?
Mayflower
On arrival they drew up the Mayflower Compact binding themselves into a single community, with William Bradford as their main leader.
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
He preached religious tolerance and separation of church and state, settling on land provided by the Narragansett sachem Canonicus.
Q 12What is the modern name of the island where Anne Hutchinson's group settled in 1637?
Aquidneck
Portsmouth and Newport grew there; together with Providence and Warwick they were united by royal charter in 1663.
Q 13Which Quaker founded Pennsylvania as a proprietary colony in 1681?
William Penn
Philadelphia became the largest city in the colonies, with about 30,000 people and an excellent port.
Q 21Charleston, South Carolina, was originally named for which king?
Charles II
The Lords Proprietors got their Carolina charter in 1663, but the settlement was not established until 1670.
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 failed settlement, established in 1585, was found abandoned in 1590?
Roanoke Colony
Carolina was the second attempted English settlement south of Virginia; Roanoke was the first.
Q 14Which parliamentarian proposed a southern colony for England's "worthy poor"?
James Oglethorpe
He hoped for a utopian colony that banned slavery, but it stayed sparsely populated and became a crown colony in 1752.
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 16Who purchased Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626 and founded New Amsterdam?
Peter Minuit
He later led former Dutch West India Company men in founding New Sweden in the Delaware Valley in 1638.
Q 17Which country planted a colony in the Delaware Valley in 1638?
Sweden
It was conquered by the Dutch in 1655 while Sweden was busy with the Second Northern War.
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 19Which 1674 agreement ended the Dutch colonial presence in America?
Treaty of Westminster
The Dutch had briefly retaken parts of New Netherland during the Third Anglo-Dutch War.
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 consolidated the New England colonies into a single dominion in 1685?
James II
Governor Edmund Andros was overthrown and the Dominion of New England dissolved in 1689 after the Glorious Revolution.
Q 25Which governor ran the short-lived Dominion of New England?
Edmund Andros
New York, West Jersey and East Jersey were added to the dominion in 1688, a year before it collapsed.
Q 26Maine remained part of Massachusetts until it achieved statehood in which year?
1820
New Hampshire, by contrast, was given its own separate charter back in 1679.
Q 27Roughly what was the colonial population on the eve of the American Revolution?
2.5 million
It had grown from about 2,000 in 1625, largely displacing Native Americans along the way.
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 29What economic policy had Britain run its colonies under for its own benefit?
Mercantilism
Trade was concentrated inside the Empire and enforced by the Navigation Acts, which colonists dodged through smuggling.
Q 30Which 1754 gathering saw Benjamin Franklin propose a unified colonial government?
Albany Congress
The Albany Plan for coordinating defense was rejected by the leaders of most colonies.