MakingHistory

An account of Buzzards Bay (Cape Cod) and the people the English found there.

Robert Dale Owen and Charles team up to produce a new edition of Owen's book, Moral Physiology, incorporating content from each of their birth control books.

Richard Hakluyt (1553-1616) was an Anglican priest and author, best remembered for his promotion of English colonization of North America and his histories of exploration. In 1584, Hakluyt returned from Paris, where he had been secretary to the ambassador, Edward Stafford, and wrote this article to encourage Queen Elizabeth I and her ministers to invest in settling a colony in America as a way to weaken the Spanish Empire. 

An abridged account of Sir Francis Drake's expedition through the Straits of Magellan and up the coast of Spanish America during his circumnavigation of the world between 1577 and 1580.

Sir John Hawkins (1532-1595) was the second son of William Hawkins, an English sea captain who sailed between Africa and the Caribbean and helped institute the “Triangle Trade” in African Slaves. In this account, he tells the story of a voyage that ended with his defeat at the Battle of San Juan de Ulúa. He was later commissioned as a privateer by Queen Elizabeth I and later, as treasurer of the Royal Navy helped redesign English ships to be more seaworthy and carry larger guns. This helped England defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588. Hawkins was the mentor of Sir Francis Drake. A freebooter is a pirate or lawless adventurer.

John Sparke visited Florida and wrote about what he saw. While some of his descriptions are fantastical (unicorns and three-headed monsters), his account includes interesting descriptions of the land and people, and tells us about what interested Englishmen exploring these regions.

Hernando De Soto explored the American southeast from 1539 to 1542 when he died of a fever and was buried in the Mississippi River. 

Captain Arthur Barlowe (1550-1620) left England in 1584 under instructions from Sir Walter Raleigh to find lands in North America to claim for Queen Elizabeth I. After stopping for supplies in the West Indies, he and Philip Amadas sailed up the Florida coast to North Carolina. Barlowe was very impressed with both the land and the people, which led to the settlement of Roanoke Island and later Virginia. The account below is from a letter he wrote to Raleigh.

A Primary Source account of Coronado's expedition in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola in 1540.

A Primary Source account of a voyage to Africa and Brazil by William Hawkins in 1530.