Both the Chesapeake and New England colonies faced extreme mortality in their early days of settlement. The settlers of Jamestown faced malaria and yellow fever as they settled too closely to brackish water. The settlers of Jamestown also did not know how to farm, and many of them starved to death. In New England many died due to exposure to the elements and a lack of food since the Pilgrims arrived in late fall. Both the Chesapeake and New England colonies would fight wars with Native American groups as the settlements grew and started to encroach on Native American land.

The Chesapeake was settled largely as an economic venture. The original goal was to find gold and a waterway to China. After these did not materialize, the settlers eventually turned to cash crops such as tobacco and cotton. Due to the scarcity of labor needed to run plantations, the settlers turned to indentured servants, poor English people looking to work off their passage to the New World. The indentured servants worked for the length of their contracts and then they were free. Many did not make it to the end, succumbing to diseases such as malaria.

Chesapeake planters turned to African slaves. They found slaves to be a better source of labor due to their ability to survive and that one did not have to free one's slaves or their offspring.

New England was settled as a way for Calvinists to practice their religion as they saw fit without interference from the Church of England. These families created self-sufficient farms and mainly used the community and their children for labor, though some New England residents would own a few slaves before the American Revolution. The church was the most important building in town and the residents of New England settled very closely together. New England created the first form of government in the New World with the Mayflower Compact.

Historians generally discuss the ways in which the Chesapeake colonies and the New England colonies were different.  These differences are said to have created completely different societies whose differences even helped to bring about the Civil War. 

While these two regions were very different, they did have similarities.  For one, these areas were largely colonized by English people.  This was in contrast to places like Pennsylvania, which had more people from other European countries.  As another similarity, both of these areas had some amount of democratic rule.  They had elected assemblies that provided a voice for their people in government.  Finally, both of these regions had established churches and tax money went to support those churches.

However, there were many important differences as well.  The most important of these is that the Chesapeake colonies’ economy was generally dominated by large plantation owners.  Most of the labor for these plantations was provided by unfree workers.  By contrast, New England’s economy was dominated by small farmers and by merchants and artisans in cities.  This made for a much more egalitarian society.  As another difference, the New England colonies were settled by families and became very family-oriented.  By contrast, the Chesapeake colonies were often settled by single people and thus had less social cohesion.

These are some of the most important similarities and contrasts between the two.

How did the English colonies in Chesapeake and New England differ in purpose?

These colonies were founded for very different purposes.  The colonies in the Chesapeake were founded solely for the purpose of making money.  They tended to be very highly stratified with a few rich people dominating their governments, society, and economy.  By contrast, the colonies in New England were settled much more for religious purposes.  They were settled by groups of families that wanted to live in a place where their particular religious beliefs would dominate.  They were very much more egalitarian than the Chesapeake colonies.  In these ways, the two regions were settled for very different reasons, which led to them having very different types of societies.