Since the arrival of its first human inhabitants some 15,000 years ago, Pennsylvania has evolved into a complex multicultural society made up of diverse peoples, cultures, and social habits. Through successive waves of immigration Pennsylvanians created a distinctive social world that influenced economic and political realities. This diversity has been the wellspring for mutual progress and sharp conflicts throughout the Commonwealth's history.
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1492 |
Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas |
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1500 |
1500s Susquehannocks begin migration from New York south into the lower Susquehanna Valley,
displacing the "Shenks Ferry" people. |
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1607 |
Establishment of Jamestown, Virginia Colony
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1608 |
Captain John Smith becomes the first European to sail up Susquehanna River. |
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1609 |
English navigator Henry Hudson becomes the first European to sail into the Delaware Bay. |
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1638 |
Sweden establishes the region's first permanent European settlement, called New Sweden, at Tinicum Island, on the Delaware River. |
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1655 |
New Sweden is taken over by the Dutch, who control the lower Delaware until the arrival of the English in 1681. |
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1681 |
King Charles II grants 45,000 square miles of North America to William Penn in a colony that he
names "Penn's Woods" in honor of Penn's father. |
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1682 |
William Penn makes his first trip to his New World colony and drafts the Great Law, which grants
all Pennsylvanians citizenship. In December, Thomas Holme creates a plan for Philadelphia,
Penn's "greene country towne." |
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1683 |
First Germans arrive in Pennsylvania and establish themselves at Germantown. To attract Welsh
settlers, William Penn establishes the 40,000-acre Welsh Tract. |
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1701 |
Penn issues his Charter of Privileges ,which grants Pennsylvania's legislature powers unknown elsewhere in the colonies. |
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1712 |
French Huguenots settle in Berks County. |
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1720 |
First Catholic congregation organized in Philadelphia |
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1722 |
Tuscaroras migrate from North Carolina to join the Iroquois in Pennsylvania. |
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1728 |
Presbyterian minister William Tennent opens the "Log College" in Bucks County to train Scots-Irish ministers in Pennsylvania. |
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1730 |
Pennsylvania's African slave population rises to 4,000. |
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1732 |
Conrad Beissel and his German followers establish the Ephrata Cloister near the banks of the Cocalico Creek in Lancaster County. |
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1736 |
Swiss Mennonite Brethren (Amish) settle in northwest Berks County and there establish the first Amish Mennonite congregation in America. |
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1740 |
The formation of Mikveh Israel, the first Jewish congregation in Pennsylvania |
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1741 |
Count Zinzendorf establishes the first Moravian settlement in Pennsylvania, which he names Bethlehem. |
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1754 |
Outbreak of the French and Indian War |
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1763 |
After the end of the French and Indian War, the Iroquois force the Delaware and other eastern Pennsylvania Indians to move farther west. |
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1764 |
Formation of the German Society in Philadelphia, the first German organization in North America, to address the plight of German "redemptioners." |
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1775 |
After the outbreak of Revolutionary War, Col. William Thompson of Carlisle organizes the first battalion in the colonies authorized by Congress. Most of the volunteers are Scots-Irish and Germans from counties west of the Susquehanna River. |
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1780 |
Pennsylvania becomes the first state in the new nation to pass a law for the gradual abolition of slavery. Most slaves are freed within 20 years, although a few remain enslaved into the 1840s.
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1791 |
Seneca chief Cornplanter receives a land grant on the Allegheny River from the Pennsylvania government, just south of the New York border, where a small Seneca community lives on the only remaining American-Indian settlement in the Commonwealth until the late 1950s. |
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1793 |
Royalist refugees from the French Revolution set up a quasi-aristocratic French court in the woods of Bradford County in a settlement they call Azilum. Fleeing the slave rebellion in French Haiti, refugees, both black and white, arrive in Philadelphia. |
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1799 |
Lazaretto Quarantine Station opens on Delaware River south of Philadelphia; Father Demetrius Gallitzin erects the first Catholic church west of the Alleghenies in a settlement he names Loretto; Pennsylvania Germans in Bucks County stage armed resistance to a federal house tax in what becomes known as Fries's Rebellion. |
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1805 |
Three hundred Lutheran separatists from Wurttemberg, Germany, led by George Rapp, move to western Pennsylvania and establish the town of Harmony. |
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1807 |
Simon Snyder becomes the first person of German descent elected governor of Pennsylvania. |
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1832 |
Fifty-seven Irish railroad laborers die at Duffy's Cut near Malvern. |
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1838 |
The Pennsylvania Constitution disenfranchises black men. |
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1842 |
In a clash of newcomers to the city, Irish Catholics attack African Americans in a parade to commemorate the end of slavery in the British West Indies. The subsequent Lombard Street riots last for 3 days before quelled by local militia. |
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1844 |
Nativist mobs in Philadelphia attack several Catholic churches in Irish neighborhoods, and burn St. Augustine's to the ground; the Moravian Church abolishes the settlement system that had banned outsiders from moving into Moravian towns. |
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1845 |
Beginning of the Irish Potato Famine, which unleashes a wave of Irish immigration to Pennsylvania; the Native-American Party holds its first convention in Philadelphia. |
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1851 |
Concert violinist Ole Bull founds the ill-fated New Norway colony in Potter County.
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1861 |
Outbreak of the American Civil War |
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1873 |
Opening of Philadelphia's Washington Avenue Immigration Station in Philadelphia, which by the time it closes in 1915 has served as the entry point for an estimated one million immigrants from Europe. |
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1875 |
Supreme Court rules that regulation of the nation's borders and of immigration is a federal matter. |
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1877 |
Great Railroad Strike leaves 26 dead in Pittsburgh; execution of the Molly Maguires in northeastern Pennsylvania. |
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1882 |
Passage of Chinese Exclusion Act ends Chinese immigration to the United States |
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1886 |
Dedication of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor |
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1891 |
Coal and Iron Police kill 9 immigrant miners during coal strike in what becomes known as the Morewood Massacre in Westmoreland County; Immigration and Naturalization Service is created to administer federal immigration law and prevent entry of illegal aliens. |
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1892 |
The federal government opens an immigration screening station at Ellis Island, New York. |
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1897 |
Coal and Iron Police gun down 19 Polish, Slovak, and Lithuanian marchers near Hazleton in what becomes know as the Lattimer Massacre. |
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1899 |
German Pennsylvanians in Punxsutawney establish the Groundhog Club.
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1907 |
U.S. and Japanese sign a "Gentleman's Agreement" curbing Japanese emigration to the United States |
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1909 |
Led by the International Workers of the World, immigrant Slavic workers stage a five-week walkout at the Pressed Steel Company outside Pittsburgh. |
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1914 |
Outbreak of the First World War results in a sharp decline in European immigration to the United States and beginning of the first Great Migration of southern African Americans to Pennsylvania cities. |
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1917 |
U.S. enters First World War; Immigration Act expands classes of foreigners barred from entry to the United States. |
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1918 |
Pittsburgh Agreement calls for independent Czechoslovakia; Congress passes Anarchist Act expanding immigration exclusion and the expulsion of subversive aliens; competition for jobs and housing between southern migrants and white residents results in explodes into race riots in Philadelphia |
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1919 |
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer unleashes a series of raids on suspected foreign subversives during what becomes known as the "Red Scare." |
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1921 |
Immigration Act establishes unprecedented limits on immigration to the Unites States. |
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1924 |
Johnson-Reed Immigration Reform Act alters quota system to 2 percent of the number of people of that country that were living in the United States in 1890, thus favoring Western Europeans. The Asian Exclusion Act prevents Asian immigrants from qualifying for naturalization or land ownership. |
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1941 |
United States entrance into World War II unleashes a second great migration of southern African Americans who find employment in Pennsylvania's booming war industries. |
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1943 |
Congress repeals the 1887 Chinese Exclusion Act. |
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1948 |
The Displaced Persons Act allows war refugees to enter U.S. outside quotas. |
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1949 |
Forty thousand people attend a day-long celebration of religious and racial understanding in Aaronsburg, a town deeded in 1879 by Jewish founder Aaron Levy to local German Protestants.
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1958 |
David Lawrence becomes the first Catholic elected governor of Pennsylvania |
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1959 |
Last Native Americans living on Indian-owned land in Pennsylvania are forced to leave the Cornplanter Tract to make way for a federal dam on the Allegheny River. |
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1964 |
African Americans riot in Philadelphia; In the next four years blacks in cities across the Commonwealth and the nation will also riot in protest of segregation and discrimination |
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1965 |
Immigration to the United States surges after repeal of the Immigration and Nationality Act ends 1924 quota system and gives priority to family reunification. |
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1970 |
Milton Shapp becomes the first person of Jewish descent elected governor of Pennsylvania. |
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1996 |
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act strengthens border enforcement and establishes income level and sponsorship requirements for immigration to the U.S |
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2005 |
The town of Hazleton enacts local anti-immigration legislation; a federal judge issues restraining against its enforcement the following year. |
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2009 |
Trial of three teenagers in Shenandoah accused of 2008 death of Mexican immigrant attracts national attention. |
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c.15,000 BCE Earliest evidence of human habitation in Pennsylvania, located at Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County, PA. |
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