Early European Settlement of North America Explained

Here's the story of the first Europeans to permanently settle in North America.

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Each year, it picked up, with the English, Spanish, French, and soon Dutch setting up more and more colonies.

Three main groups came to settle in the colonies.
1. Economic immigrants, who were those looking for a better life. This group included the indentured servants, or people who paid for their passage to the New World by being forced to work for somebody for a certain number of years before getting their freedom. Most of the indentured servants were English farmers who had been pushed off their lands due to overcrowding. Up to ⅔ of European immigrants who came to the American colonies between the 1630s and the American Revolution were indentured servants.
2. Religious immigrants, who came to practice their religion freely. Included in this group were the famous Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth Colony.
3. Forced immigrants, who came over as slaves, mostly from Africa.

It was the English immigrants who dominated in what later became the United States of America, probably because they came to live in larger numbers during the 1600s. From about 1630 to 1640 alone, around 20,000 Puritans crossed the Atlantic to live in New England. Even today, people with English ancestry arguably make up the largest group of Americans, though it is hard to know for sure. 8 out of the 10 most common last names in the United States are of English or British Isles origin.