1.
Wilmington, Delaware
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Wilmington is the largest city in the state of Delaware, United States, built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America. It is located at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine River and it is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley metropolitan area. Wilmington was named by Proprietor Thomas Penn after his friend Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, as of the 2015 United States Census estimate, the population of the city is 71,948, reflecting an increase of 1. 5% from the 2010 Census. The Wilmington Metropolitan Division, comprising New Castle County, DE, Cecil County, MD and Salem County, Wilmington is built on the site of Fort Christina and the settlement Kristinehamn, the first Swedish settlement in North America. The area now known as Wilmington was settled by the Lenape band led by Sachem Mattahorn just before Henry Hudson sailed up the Len-api Hanna in 1609, the area was called Maax-waas Unk or Bear Place after the Maax-waas Hanna that flowed by. It was called the Bear River because it flowed west to the Bear People, the Dutch heard and spelled the river and the place as Minguannan. The area was known as The Rocks, and is located near the foot of present-day Seventh Street. Fort Christina served as the headquarters for the colony of New Sweden which consisted of, for the most part, the lower Delaware River region, dr. Timothy Stidham was a prominent citizen and doctor in Wilmington. He was born in 1610, probably in Hammel, Denmark and raised in Gothenburg and he arrived in New Sweden in 1654 and is recorded as the first physician in Delaware. The most important Swedish governor was Colonel Johan Printz, who ruled the colony under Swedish law from 1643 to 1653. He was succeeded by Johan Rising, who upon his arrival in 1654, seized the Dutch post Fort Casimir, located at the site of the present town of New Castle and this marked the end of Swedish rule in North America. Although during the American Revolutionary War only one small battle was fought in Delaware, the British remained in the town until they vacated Philadelphia in 1778. In 1800, Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, a French Huguenot, knowledgeable in the manufacture of gunpowder, by 1802 DuPont had begun making the explosive in a mill on the Brandywine River north of Brandywine Village and just outside the town of Wilmington. The DuPont company became a supplier to the U. S. military. Located on the banks of the Brandywine River, the village was annexed by Wilmington city. The greatest growth in the city occurred during the Civil War, Delaware, though officially remaining a member of the Union, was a border state and divided in its support of both the Confederate and the Union causes. The war created enormous demand for goods and materials supplied by Wilmington including ships, railroad cars, gunpowder, shoes, and other war-related goods. By 1868, Wilmington was producing more iron ships than the rest of the combined and it rated first in the production of gunpowder and second in carriages
2.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
3.
Pennsylvania
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Pennsylvania /ˌpɛnsᵻlˈveɪnjə/, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle, Pennsylvania is the 33rd largest, the 5th most populous, and the 9th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The states five most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, the state capital, and its ninth-largest city, is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of shoreline along Lake Erie and the Delaware Estuary. The state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States, it came into being in 1681 as a result of a land grant to William Penn. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden and it was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12,1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the states largest city of Philadelphia, during the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washingtons headquarters during the winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west, of a total 46,055 square miles,44,817 square miles are land,490 square miles are inland waters, and 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie. It is the 33rd largest state in the United States, Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Cities include Philadelphia, Reading, Lebanon and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, the northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining communities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston City, and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest, the state has 5 regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau, Ridge and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and the Erie Plain. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the corner, has a humid continental climate. The largest city, Philadelphia, has characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware. Moving toward the interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increase. Western areas of the state, particularly locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, the Tuscarora Nation took up temporary residence in the central portion of Pennsylvania ca. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their lands in America
4.
Maryland
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The states largest city is Baltimore, and its capital is Annapolis. Among its occasional nicknames are Old Line State, the Free State, the state is named after Henrietta Maria of France, the wife of Charles I of England. George Calvert was the first Lord of Baltimore and the first English proprietor of the colonial grant. Maryland was the state to ratify the United States Constitution. Maryland is one of the smallest U. S. states in terms of area, as well as one of the most densely populated, Maryland has an area of 12,406.68 square miles and is comparable in overall area with Belgium. It is the 42nd largest and 9th smallest state and is closest in size to the state of Hawaii, the next largest state, its neighbor West Virginia, is almost twice the size of Maryland. Maryland possesses a variety of topography within its borders, contributing to its nickname America in Miniature. The mid-portion of this border is interrupted by Washington, D. C. which sits on land that was part of Montgomery and Prince Georges counties and including the town of Georgetown. This land was ceded to the United States Federal Government in 1790 to form the District of Columbia, the Chesapeake Bay nearly bisects the state and the counties east of the bay are known collectively as the Eastern Shore. Close to the town of Hancock, in western Maryland, about two-thirds of the way across the state. This geographical curiosity makes Maryland the narrowest state, bordered by the Mason–Dixon line to the north, portions of Maryland are included in various official and unofficial geographic regions. Much of the Baltimore–Washington corridor lies just south of the Piedmont in the Coastal Plain, earthquakes in Maryland are infrequent and small due to the states distance from seismic/earthquake zones. The M5.8 Virginia earthquake in 2011 was felt moderately throughout Maryland, buildings in the state are not well-designed for earthquakes and can suffer damage easily. The lack of any glacial history accounts for the scarcity of Marylands natural lakes, laurel Oxbow Lake is an over one-hundred-year-old 55-acre natural lake two miles north of Maryland City and adjacent to Russett. Chews Lake is a natural lake two miles south-southeast of Upper Marlboro. There are numerous lakes, the largest of them being the Deep Creek Lake. Maryland has shale formations containing natural gas, where fracking is theoretically possible, as is typical of states on the East Coast, Marylands plant life is abundant and healthy. Middle Atlantic coastal forests, typical of the southeastern Atlantic coastal plain, grow around Chesapeake Bay, moving west, a mixture of Northeastern coastal forests and Southeastern mixed forests cover the central part of the state
5.
Delaware
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Delaware is a state located in the Mid-Atlantic and/or Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, to the northeast by New Jersey, the state takes its name from Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and Virginias first colonial governor. Delaware occupies the portion of the Delmarva Peninsula and is the second smallest, the sixth least populous. Delaware is divided into three counties, the lowest number of counties of any state, from north to south, the three counties are New Castle, Kent, and Sussex. While the southern two counties have historically been agricultural, New Castle County has been more industrialized. Before its coastline was explored by Europeans in the 16th century, Delaware was inhabited by groups of Native Americans, including the Lenape in the north. It was initially colonized by Dutch traders at Zwaanendael, near the present town of Lewes, Delaware was one of the 13 colonies participating in the American Revolution. On December 7,1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the Constitution of the United States, the Delaware Indians, a name used by Europeans for Lenape people indigenous to the Delaware Valley, also derive their name from the same source. The surname de La Warr comes from Sussex and is of Anglo-Norman origin and it came probably from a Norman lieu-dit La Guerre. This toponymic could derive from the Latin word ager, from the Breton gwern or from the Late Latin varectum, the toponyms Gara, Gare, Gaire also appear in old texts cited by Lucien Musset, where the word gara means gore. It could also be linked with a patronymic from the Old Norse verr, Delaware is 96 miles long and ranges from 9 miles to 35 miles across, totaling 1,954 square miles, making it the second-smallest state in the United States after Rhode Island. Delaware is bounded to the north by Pennsylvania, to the east by the Delaware River, Delaware Bay, New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean, small portions of Delaware are also situated on the eastern side of the Delaware River sharing land boundaries with New Jersey. The state of Delaware, together with the Eastern Shore counties of Maryland, the definition of the northern boundary of the state is unusual. Most of the boundary between Delaware and Pennsylvania was originally defined by an arc extending 12 miles from the cupola of the courthouse in the city of New Castle and this boundary is often referred to as the Twelve-Mile Circle. This is the only nominally circular state boundary in the United States, to the west, a portion of the arc extends past the easternmost edge of Maryland. The remaining western border runs slightly east of due south from its intersection with the arc, the Wedge of land between the northwest part of the arc and the Maryland border was claimed by both Delaware and Pennsylvania until 1921, when Delawares claim was confirmed. Delaware is on a plain, with the lowest mean elevation of any state in the nation. Its highest elevation, located at Ebright Azimuth, near Concord High School, the northernmost part of the state is part of the Piedmont Plateau with hills and rolling surfaces
6.
Brandywine Creek (Christina River)
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Brandywine Creek is a tributary of the Christina River in southeastern Pennsylvania and northern Delaware in the United States. The Lower Brandywine is 20.4 miles long and is a designated Pennsylvania Scenic River with several tributary streams. The mouth of the creek on the Christina River in present-day Wilmington, Delaware, is the site of the New Sweden colony, the Battle of Brandywine was fought around the creek near Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, on September 11,1777, during the American Revolution. Water powered gristmills in Brandywine Village, near the mouth. The headwaters of both the East Branch and West Branch of Brandywine Creek are in western Chester County, Pennsylvania, the creek continues south through First State National Historical Park and Brandywine Creek State Park, into Wilmington, where it flows through Brandywine Park near the city center. The confluence of the Christina and Delaware rivers is the dividing point between the freshwater Delaware River and the saltwater Delaware Bay. Nearby Avondale and Kennett Square, Pennsylvania are often considered part of the Brandywine Valley, Native Americans of the Algonquian-speaking Lenape Nation lived in the area between the Hudson River Valley and southern Delaware before the European settlement. They lived by hunting, farming corn, beans, and squash, the Brandywine had an especially rich shad fishery. The Lenape called the creek Wauwaset, Wawasiungh, or Wawassan, the first European settlement on the Brandywine was Swedish. About 600 Swedes, Finns, and Dutch settled in New Sweden and they tended to settle along the Delaware River rather than move inland along the Brandywine and are credited with introducing the log cabin into America. The creek’s current name may be from an old Dutch word for brandy or gin, brandewijn, or from the name of a mill owner. A1681 map labels the creek Brande wine Cr, Thomas Holmes 1687 map of Pennsylvania gives the name as simply Brandy Wine and shows it flowing into Christian Creek and then the Dellaware River. The Swedes, Dutch and English disputed possession of the area until 1674, William Penn was granted a charter for Pennsylvania in 1681 and gained control over the lower three counties, as Delaware was then known, soon thereafter. The population of New Sweden had only reached about 1,000, on the shore of the Delaware. By 1687, a Swedish colonist, Tyman Stidham, opened the first mill on the Brandywine, Holmes 1687 map shows only five land claims along the Brandywine, all near present-day Chadds Ford. Land claims of the earlier Swedish and Dutch colonists were not noted on this map and their estimated population had fallen from 10, 000–20,000 in 1600 to 2,000 in 1682. The Lenape signed a series of treaties with the Europeans, beginning with a 1682 treaty with William Penn, but were forced out of eastern Pennsylvania by the time of the French and Indian War. Hannah Freeman, known as Indian Hannah, is believed to be the last Lenape to have lived in Chester County and is buried in Embreeville, the valley was settled by Quakers, and other dissident Protestants, following Penn’s Charter
