The thirteen colonies in 1775
The British colonies on the eve of the Revolution, grouped into the regions you need to compare.
Each color is a region. The shaded land is where each colony had set up counties by April 1775; colonies claimed land farther west, but few colonists lived there yet.
Every step in words
1775: The colonies on the eve of revolution
Borders as of 19 April 1775, the day of Lexington and Concord
By 1775 the thirteen colonies ran from New Hampshire (with Maine as part of Massachusetts) down to Georgia. Most colonists still lived within about 200 miles of the Atlantic coast.
Each region grew in its own way. New England had small farms, towns and trade. The Middle colonies grew grain and drew settlers from all over Europe. The Chesapeake and North Carolina grew tobacco, and South Carolina and Georgia grew rice and indigo, both with the labor of enslaved Africans. Those differences shaped the arguments of the next century.
Where the borders come from
- Atlas of Historical County Boundaries: Historical Counties, The Newberry Library. CC0 (public domain).
- Natural Earth coastlines, lakes and countries (1:50m), Natural Earth. Public domain.
What to keep in mind
- The shapes show the colonies' counties, not their full charter claims. Where two colonies both claimed land and set up counties there, both shapes are drawn and overlap: Pennsylvania and Virginia around Pittsburgh, and Connecticut's town of Westmoreland in Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley. The smaller colony is drawn on top; pick the other one in the list to see its whole shape.
- Vermont is shown as part of New York, which ran counties there in 1775; New Hampshire claimed it too.
- Borders are from the Newberry Library's Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, which records every change to the day, with the law or treaty behind it. To keep the map quick to load, coastlines and borders are smoothed, so small bends and tiny islands are missing.