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Plum Island, Massachusetts
Plum Island is a barrier island located off the northeast coast of Massachusetts, north of Cape Ann, in the United States. It is approximately in length. The island is named for the wild beach plum shrubs that grow on its dunes, but is also famous for the purple sands at high tide, which get their color from tiny crystals of pink pyrope garnet. It is located in parts of four municipalities in Essex County. From north to south they are the city of Newburyport, and the towns of Newbury, Rowley, and Ipswich. History Captain John Smith Plum Island appears as an unnamed island as early as Captain John Smith's map of New England. Various scholars have speculated on the nature of the earlier accounts of European explorers in the New World, with particular focus on the latter's surveys of the coastlines of Massachusetts, but Smith's account identifies Plum Island. He describes a harbor at "Angoam" (elsewhere "Aggawom", the Anglicised Native American name for the native village ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essex County, Massachusetts
Essex County is a county in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. At the 2020 census, the total population was 809,829, making it the third-most populous county in the state, and the eightieth-most populous in the country. It is part of the Greater Boston area (the Boston–Cambridge– Newton, MA– NH Metropolitan Statistical Area). The largest city in Essex County is Lynn. The county was named after the English county of Essex. It has two traditional county seats: Salem and Lawrence. Prior to the dissolution of the county government in 1999, Salem had jurisdiction over the Southern Essex District, and Lawrence had jurisdiction over the Northern Essex District, but currently these cities do not function as seats of government. However, the county and the districts remain as administrative regions recognized by various governmental agencies, which gathered vital statistics or disposed of judicial case loads under these geographic subdivisions, and are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beach Plum
''Prunus maritima'', the beach plum, is a species of plum native to the East Coast of the United States. It is a choice wild edible and its few pests and salt tolerance make it a resilient fruit crop for degraded lands and urban soils. Description ''Prunus maritima'' is a deciduous shrub, in its natural sand dune habitat growing tall, although it can grow larger, up to tall, when cultivated in gardens. The leaves are alternate, elliptical, long and broad, with a sharply toothed margin. They are green on top and pale below, becoming showy red or orange in the autumn. The flowers are in diameter, with five white petals and large yellow anthers. The fruit is an edible drupe in diameter in the wild plant, red, yellow, blue, or nearly black.Maine Department of Conservation Natural Areas Program: Huxley, A., ed. (1992). ''New RHS Dictionary of Gardening''. Macmillan . The plant is salt-tolerant and cold-hardy. It prefers the full sun and well-drained soil. It spreads roo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quit-rent
Quit rent, quit-rent, or quitrent is a tax or land tax imposed on occupants of freehold or leased land in lieu of services to a higher landowning authority, usually a government or its assigns. Under feudal law, the payment of quit rent (Latin ''Quietus Redditus'', pl. ''Redditus Quieti'') freed the tenant of a holding from the obligation to perform such other services as were obligatory under feudal tenure, or freed the occupier of the land from the burden of having others use their own distinct rights that affected the land (e.g. hunting rights which would have hindered farming). Thus it was a payment for distinct rights that were connected with the full enjoyment of the land but not parcelled up in the ownership of the land. Formally it was a sort of buy-back rather than a tax. A tax can be varied by the taxer; and if not paid there are penalties that can be varied by the taxer without formal limit. In contrast the only sanction for not paying a feudal quit rent was that the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General Court Of Massachusetts
The Massachusetts General Court (formally styled the General Court of Massachusetts) is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name "General Court" is a hold-over from the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, when the colonial assembly, in addition to making laws, sat as a judicial court of appeals. Before the adoption of the state constitution in 1780, it was called the ''Great and General Court'', but the official title was shortened by John Adams, author of the state constitution. It is a bicameral body. The upper house is the Massachusetts Senate which is composed of 40 members. The lower body, the Massachusetts House of Representatives, has 160 members. (Until 1978, it had 240 members.) It meets in the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill in Boston. The current President of the Senate is Karen Spilka, and the Speaker of the House is Ronald Mariano. Since 1959, Democrats have controlled both houses of the Massachusetts General Court, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630–1691), more formally the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, was an English settlement on the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as the ''Province of Massachusetts Bay''. The lands of the settlement were in southern New England, with initial settlements on two natural harbors and surrounding land about apart—the areas around Salem and Boston, north of the previously established Plymouth Colony. The territory nominally administered by the Massachusetts Bay Colony covered much of central New England, including portions of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by the owners of the Massachusetts Bay Company, including investors in the failed Dorchester Company, which had established a short-lived settlement on Cape Ann in 1623. The colony began in 1628 and was the company's second attempt at colonization. It was s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Newfoundland Colony
Newfoundland Colony was an English and, later, British colony established in 1610 on the island of Newfoundland off the Atlantic coast of Canada, in what is now the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. That followed decades of sporadic English settlement on the island, which was at first seasonal, rather than permanent. It was made a Crown colony in 1824 and a Dominion in 1907. Its economy collapsed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and Newfoundland relinquished its dominion status, effectively becoming once again a colony governed by appointees from the Colonial Office in Whitehall in London. In 1949, the colony voted to join Canada as the Province of Newfoundland. History Indigenous people like the Beothuk (known as the '' Skræling'' in Greenlandic Norse), and Innu were the first inhabitants of Newfoundland and Labrador. During the late 15th century, European explorers like João Fernandes Lavrador, Gaspar Corte-Real, John Cabot, Jacques Cartier and others beg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Mason (governor)
Captain John Mason (1586–1635) was a sailor and colonist who was instrumental to the establishment of various settlements in colonial America. Born in 1586 at King's Lynn, Norfolk, and educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1610, he was appointed by James I to help reclaim the Hebrides. As a reward, he was granted exclusive fishing rights in the North Sea. This was ignored by the Dutch and he was treated as a pirate by the Scots. In 1615, he was arrested, but soon released after the seizure of his ship. He was appointed the second Proprietary Governor of Newfoundland's Cuper's Cove colony in 1615, succeeding John Guy. Mason arrived on the island in 1616 and explored much of the territory. He compiled a map of the island and wrote and published a short tract (or "Discourse") of his findings. Mason drew up a map of the island of Newfoundland. Published in William Vaughan's Cambrensium Caroleia in 1625, the map included previously established placenames as well as new ones such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merrimack River
The Merrimack River (or Merrimac River, an occasional earlier spelling) is a river in the northeastern United States. It rises at the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers in Franklin, New Hampshire, flows southward into Massachusetts, and then flows northeast until it empties into the Gulf of Maine at Newburyport. From Pawtucket Falls in Lowell, Massachusetts, onward, the Massachusetts–New Hampshire border is roughly calculated as the line three miles north of the river. The Merrimack is an important regional focus in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The central-southern part of New Hampshire and most of northeast Massachusetts is known as the Merrimack Valley. Several U.S. naval ships have been named and USS ''Merrimac'' in honor of this river. The river is perhaps best known for the early American literary classic ''A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers'' by Henry David Thoreau. Etymology and spelling The etymology of the name o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James I Of England
James VI and I (James Charles Stuart; 19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until his death in 1625. The kingdoms of Scotland and England were individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciaries, and laws, though both were ruled by James in personal union. James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and a great-great-grandson of Henry VII, King of England and Lord of Ireland, and thus a potential successor to all three thrones. He succeeded to the Scottish throne at the age of thirteen months, after his mother was compelled to abdicate in his favour. Four different regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, though he did not gain full control of his government until 1583. In 1603, he succeeded Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, who died childless. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plymouth Council For New England
The Council for New England was a 17th-century English joint stock company that was granted a royal charter to found colonial settlements along the coast of North America. The Council was established in November of 1620, and was disbanded (although with no apparent changes in land titles) in 1635. It provided for the establishment of the Plymouth Colony, the State of New Hampshire, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the New Haven Colony, and the eventual State of Maine. It was largely the creation of Sir Ferdinand Gorges. Some of the persons involved had previously received a charter in 1606 as the Plymouth Company and had founded the short-lived Popham Colony within the territory of northern Virginia (actually in present-day Maine in the United States). The company had fallen into disuse following the abandonment of the 1607 colony. The Council was re-established after, with support from Gorges, (1) Captain John Smith had completed a thorough survey of the Atlantic side of New ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles I Of England
Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. He was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He became heir apparent to the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1612 upon the death of his elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry him to the Spanish Habsburg princess Maria Anna culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated the futility of the marriage negotiation. Two years later, he married the Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria of France. After his 1625 succession, Charles quarrelled with the English Parliament, which sought to curb his royal prerogative. He believed in the divine right of kings, and was determined to govern acco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980, making it the only human disease to be eradicated. The initial symptoms of the disease included fever and vomiting. This was followed by formation of ulcers in the mouth and a skin rash. Over a number of days, the skin rash turned into the characteristic fluid-filled blisters with a dent in the center. The bumps then scabbed over and fell off, leaving scars. The disease was spread between people or via contaminated objects. Prevention was achieved mainly through the smallpox vaccine. Once the disease had developed, certain antiviral medication may have helped. The risk of death was about 30%, with higher rates among babies. Often, those who survived had extensive scarring of their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
