The founders of the Southern Colonies were, for the most part, out to make money. They brought their families, as did the New England colonists, and they kept their families together on the plantations. But their main motivation was to make the good money that was available in the new American market. The New England Colonies were largely farming and fishing communities. The people made their own clothes and shoes. They grew much of their own food. Crops like corn and wheat grew in large numbers, and much was shipped to England. Foods that didn't grow in America were shipped from England. Boston was the major New England port. The Middle Colonies were part agriculture, part industrial. Wheat and other grains grew on farms in Pennsylvania and New York. Factories in Maryland produced iron, and factories in Pennsylvania produced paper and textiles. Trade with England was plentiful in these colonies as well. The Southern Colonies were almost entirely agricultural. The main feature was the plantation, a large plot of land that contained a great many acres of farmland and buildings in which lived the people who owned the land and the people who worked the land. (A large part of the workforce was African slaves, who first arrived in 1619.) Southern plantations grew tobacco, rice, and indigo, which they sold to buyers in England and elsewhere in America. More than simply for religious freedom, economics played a large role in the settlement of various geographic regions in North America. Like the Spanish and the French however, the first successful English settlement Jamestown, was dependent on the trade of tobacco back to England for its success. The differences in the settlers" reason for moving to the colonies can also be explained by where they decided to settle. The first colonies were built in areas that the colonists thought would best support new towns, and where the Indians happened to be helpful enough to assist the newly formed towns in survival.
