The Life and Times of
Maria (unknown) Voltz

1630's

Her husband, Hans Voltz, born during 1635

1635 Tobacco sale in France restricted to apothecaries by doctor's prescription only.

1636 Harvard College founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1636 Saint Isaac Jogues, a French Jesuit missionary, goes to Canada as missionary to the Huron people.

Area of modern Rhode Island settled by 1636

The Dutch occupied Ceylon, forcing villagers to supply quotas of cinnamon, as had the Portuguese previously.

1637 Rene Decartes publishes drawings of specimens he observed under a microscope.

1637 The Japanese government has several thousand Japanese Christians massacred, and all foreign traders except the Dutch are forced out of Japan.

1638 Area of Delaware settled by 1638

1638 Peter Minuit founds the New Sweden colony

The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut 1639

1639 - 1652 English Civil War

1640's

Birth

Maria (unknown) Voltz born during 1640

1640 Charles I of England calls the Parliament again after years of not having it. So begins the "Long Parliament"

1640Queen Christina of Sweden establishes Finland's first university, the Swedish-language

Kirchner, a German Jesuit, builds a magic lantern (slide projector).

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1641 Civil War brings the collapse of the government in Kongo.

2

1642 English Civil war begins. Cavaliers, supporters of Charles I, against Roundheads, parliamentary forces.

1642 The first complete Finnish translation of the Bible appears.

Galileo dies.

Montreal founded.

Rembrandt paints his Night Watch.

Samedo Alvaro recounted stories to Europeans about the Chinese healing root called jin-chen, or ginseng.

3

1643 Evangelista Torricelli accidentally invents the mercury barometer.

Taj Mahal completed.

4

1644-1655 Pope Innocent X

Descartes's Principles of Philosophy.

End of Ming Dynasty in China-Manchus come to power.

Long Parliament directed that only Hebrew canon only be read in the Church of England (effectively removed the Apocropha)

5

1645 Oliver Cromwell reorganizes Parliaments armies and (eventually) captures Charles I.

Alexis I second Russian czar of the house of Romanov succeeds his father Michael.

6

Oliver Cromwell defeats Royalists 1646.

7

1647 Rice was introduced into cultivation in the Carolinas. Today California, Arkansas, Louisiana, & Texas are the main rice producing states.

Massachusetts Bay Colony required an elementary school in towns of 50 families.

8

1648 - 1660 The Deluge/Northern War, A series of wars involving Poland, Sweden, Prussia, Russia and Transylvania and Denmark

1648 End of the Thirty Years' War. German population about half of what it was in 1618 because of war and pestilence.

1648 Sweet potatoes were in cultivation in Virginia.

Jean Baptiste van Helmont reported one of the earliest and most spectacular experiments in plant physiology and nutrition. A five pound willow tree was planted in 200 pounds of dry soil. It was watered and allowed to grow for five years. At the end of this period, the total gain in weight was one hundred and sixty-nine pounds and three ounces, while the soil had lost only two ounces. Van Helmont guessed that water is a complex substance which is changed into plant material.

Parliament demands reforms. Charles I offers concessions, brought to trial 1648

Protestant Netherlands independence acknowledged by Spain in 1648. High point of Dutch Renaissance-painters Rubens, Van Dyck, Hals, and Rembrandt

Thirty Years War pits Protestants against Catholics

9

1649 Charles I is executed. England is proclaimed a republic. Oliver Cromwell tried to force the Irish off their land.

Charles I beheaded 1649.

1650's

10

By 1650 coffee had arrived in England. Within 25 years one could drink the beverage in over 3,000 coffee houses in that country.

By around this time the kingdom of Angola was finally conquered by the Portuguese.

French philosopher, scientist and mathematics, Rene' Descartes dies.

From this time until the 20th Century the Caribbean was the world center for growing sugar cane.

Rum introduced

11

1651 Britain's Navigation Act required that all imports from the colonies be received on British ships.

12

1652 - 1654 First Anglo-Dutch War

1652 The first New England pine trees were felled for British ship masts. Before the end of the century, British warships were built in North America. By 1775 easy sources of wood for masts had been stripped from Eastern North America.

John Hull of Boston, Massachusetts was selected to establish a New England mint. His first coins bore inscription only, but his second set was ornamented with a willow, his third with an oak, and his fourth (the largest issue) with a pine. These Boston shillings are sometimes called the tree coins. John Hull grew wealthy through this process and became the subject of an apocryphal tale, which claims that the marriage of his daughter to Mr. Samuel Sewell was settled with a dowry of 30,000 shillings, the amount determined as equivalent to her weight.

Pasqua Rosée, a Greek who settled in England, opened his London coffeehouse with a printing of "The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink" summarized as

13

1653-1658 Oliver Cromwell dissolves parliament and takes the title of "Lord Protector" to rule as a dictator

Cromwell becomes Lord Protector 1653.

14

1654 Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat develop the theory of probability. English chemist Robert Boyle helps found the Philosophical College (which later became the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge).

Kosher food in the U.S. introduced

15

Christian Huggens discovered the rings of Saturn.

16

1656 Baruch Spinoza is ex-communicated by the rabbis and banished from Amsterdam. For the next five years he lives on the outskirts of the city working grinding optical lenses.

17

1657 Boston Measles Epidemic

1657 Chocolate drinking introduced in London.

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1658 Oliver Cromwell died of malaria, refusing to take the only known treatment (quinine from cinchona), because it was introduced by Jesuits. As a result, Amsterdam "was lighted up as for a great deliverance and children ran along the canals, shouting for joy that the Devil was dead." By 1681 cinchona was universally accepted as antimalarial.

1658-1712 Richard Cromwell Ruler of England. Puritan government collapses.

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Maria (unknown) Voltz married Hans Voltz during 1659

1660's

20

Maria (unknown) Voltz died during February 1660

1660-1685 Charles II King of England. English Parliament calls for the restoration of the monarchy and invites Charles II to return from France restoring the monarchy in England continuing through James II. Decision of Long Parliament of 1644 reversed reinstating the Apocrypha, but reversal was not heeded by non-conformists. Charles II agrees to respect the Magna Carta and Petition of Rights

Area of New Jersey settled by 1660

Area of North Carolina settled by 1660

21

1661 Charles II is crowned King of England. Louis XIV begins personal rule as absolute monarch; starts to build Versailles.

1661 Louis XIV becomes absolute monarch of France and begins work on palace at Versailles

Georg Hack from Cologne settles in Maryland

22

The Connecticut Colony Charter 1662

1662 Moliere's troupe performs "le ecole des femmes"

Britain importing 16 million pounds of sugar per year.

24

1664 - 1667 Second Anglo-Dutch War including the capture of New Amsterdam, renamed New York City

1664 British take New Amsterdam from the Dutch. English limit "Nonconformity" with reestablished Anglican Church.

Isaac Newton's experiments with gravity.

25

1655-1667 Pope Alexander VII

1665 London swept by bubonic plague. It was noticed that people who lived without sugar escaped harm. Over 68,000 die.

1665 Robert Hooke identifies cells

Great Plague in London kills 75,000.

26

1666 Approval of the Canal du Midi is given to improve transportation in France and provide ships with a route to the Atlantic from the Mediterranean.

Great Fire of London.

Molière's Misanthrope.

27

1667 "Little Russia", an area around Kiev, is conceeded by the Polish government to the Russian government.

1667 Earthquake in Shemaka, Caucasia kills 80,000

1667 Epidemics of smallpox, dysentary begin.

1667 Milton's Paradise Lost, widely considered the greatest epic poem in English.

1667-1670 Pope Clement IX

The apparent danger of using animal serums foreign to human beings and animal serums foreign to other animals is reported in medical literature in 1667, when lambs blood was unsuccessfully used as a human blood transfusion.

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1668 Francesco Redi attempts to prove that rotting meat cannot spontaneously turn into flies.

1668 Merck begins an apothecary shop in Darmstadt Germany.

Area of Michigan settled by 1668

Researcher and explorer Johann Lederer from Hamburg arrives

1670's

30

1670-1676 Pope Clement X

Area of South Carolina settled by 1670

Hudson Bay Co. founded with Prince Ruprecht as governor

Measles and tertian fever epidemics displace cholera.

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1672 - 1674 Third Anglo-Dutch War

1672 - 1678 Franco-Dutch War

1672 Dysentary becomes mild and some smallpox occurs.

1672 Peter the Great

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1673 In England the Test Act is passed, allowing only members of the Anglican Church to hold public office.

1673 Inoculation against smallpox appears in Denmark.

1673 Marquette and Jolliet descend the Mississippi, return to Wisconsin via Illinois River and Lake Michigan.

Jacques Marquette discovered Mississippi June 17, 1673.

Jacques Marquette visited present site of Chicago, in present day Cook County.

Kaskaskia or La Vantum Indian village of 7-8000 inhabitants discovered September 1673 in present day Randolph county Illinois.

Moliere dies at age 51.

34

1674 First mention of diabetes mellitus in British Pharmaceutice Rationalis, by Thomas Willis, member of the Royal College of Physicians.

In Virginia the eventual demands of tobacco as a crop resulted in institution of slave labor in about 1674.

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Death of Jacques Marquette at mouth of Marquette River, Michigan May 18, 1675.

1675 King Philip's War

1675 Malaria epidemic in England and discovery of "peruvian bark" quinine.

1675 Marquette founds mission near Starved Rock, Illinois.

Cowpeas in America introduced

Slave traders brought cowpeas to Jamaica. A native of India, this pea has many varieties important in the southeastern US, particularly the black-eye and the crowders.

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1676 Jimsonweed gained its common name (originally Jamestown weed) when British soldiers in Virginia mistook Datura for an edible plant and "turn'd fool" with hallucinations that endured for eleven days.

1676-1689 Pope Innocent XI

Danish astronomer Ole Christensen Roemer observes that light moves at a finite speed by studying Jupiter's moons.

Nikolaus de Meyer from Hamburg (Germany) becomes Mayor of New York

The First Thanksgiving Proclamation 1676

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1677 Ice cream becomes popular dessert in Paris.

1677 On February 2 first Baruch Spinoza dies.

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1678 First medical treatise in America on smallpox and measles.

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1679 England passes the Habeas Corpuss act guaranteeing people protection from arbitrary arrest.

1680's

1680 - 1684 Fourth Anglo-Dutch War

1680 La Salle builds fort Crevecoeur near Peoria, Illinois.

Cranberries in New Jersey introduced

January 1-15, 1680 Robert De LaSalle builds the Fort of the Broken Heart, the first thing done on the soil of Illinois with a view to permanent occupation, in present day Randolph County.

Robert De LaSalle first visits Illinois January 1680 .

1681 The Canal du Midi is finished after eight years of work. The Canal was to be a shortcut between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, avoiding the long sea voyage around hostile Spain and the Barbary pirates, and a trip that in the 17th century required a full month of sailing

1682 La Salle erects Fort St. Louis at Starved Rock, Illinois.

1682 Pennsylvania founded by William Penn

Fort called Fort St Louis, built on Starved Rock, near Utica in present day LaSalle County.

Ivan V and Peter I are co-rulers of Imperial Russia, with Peter's sister Sophia as the regent in 1682.

Peter I The Great rules Russia 1682-1725

Robert De LaSalle's third visit and discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi on April 7, 1682 and taken for possession of France.

The area of present day was settled by 1682

1683 Thirteen families of German Mennonites and Quakers seeking religious freedom arrived in Pennsylvania on the ship "Concord" led by Francis Daniel Pastorius. They purchased 43,000 acres of land and founded Germantown, six miles north of Philadelphia.

Vienna defended against Turkish invasion

War of European powers against the Turks (1683 to 1699). Vienna withstands three-month Turkish siege marking the high point of Turkish advance into Europe.

1684 French fleet bomb Genoa

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's calculus published.