January 1 » General George Washington hoists the first United States flag; the Grand Union Flag at Prospect Hill.
May 1 » Establishment of the Illuminati in Ingolstadt, Upper Bavaria, by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt.
May 4 » Rhode Island becomes the first American colony to renounce allegiance to King George III.
July 2 » American Revolution: The Continental Congress adopts a resolution severing ties with the Kingdom of Great Britain although the wording of the formal Declaration of Independence is not published until July 4.
December 5 » Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest academic honor society in the U.S., holds its first meeting at the College of William & Mary.
December 19 » Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in The Pennsylvania Journal entitled "The American Crisis".
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Peeters Mathieu, "FutureHistory", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/stamboom-riske/I1643.php : accessed February 8, 2026), "Petrus / Peeter Verhaegen (1685-1776)".
Copy warning
Genealogical publications are copyright protected. Although data is often retrieved from public archives, the searching, interpreting, collecting, selecting and sorting of the data results in a unique product. Copyright protected work may not simply be copied or republished.
Please stick to the following rules
Request permission to copy data or at least inform the author, chances are that the author gives permission, often the contact also leads to more exchange of data.
Do not use this data until you have checked it, preferably at the source (the archives).
State from whom you have copied the data and ideally also his/her original source.