1.
Jean Leon Gerome Ferris
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He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Stephen James Ferris, a portrait painter and a devotee of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Mariano Fortuny. He grew up around art, having been trained by his father, Ferris enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1879 and trained further at the Académie Julian beginning in 1883 under William-Adolphe Bouguereau. He also met his namesake Jean-Léon Gérôme, who greatly influenced Ferriss decision to paint scenes from American history, as Ferris wrote in his unpublished autobiography, axiom was that one would paint best that with which he is most familiar. However, initially his subjects were Orientalist in nature, that movement having been in vogue when he was young, some of his material was original, some of it took after Fortuny, but he was skilled enough, despite never having had any experience with Asia. In 1882, he exhibited a painting entitled Feeding the Ibis, by 1895, Ferris had gained a reputation as a historical painter, and he embarked on his dream of creating a series of paintings that told a historical narrative. In 1898 he sold one of these, General Howes Levee,1777, consequently, he never sold another one of those, but he did sell the reproduction rights to various publishing companies. This later would have the effect of greatly popularizing his work, as these companies made prints, postcards, calendars, laminated cards of these works were still being sold as late as 1984. The paintings showed idealized portrayals of famous moments from American history, the Landing of William Penn, for example, shows Penn being greeted at New Castle by American Indians who are clothed in the tradition of tribes from the Great Plains. In The First Thanksgiving 1621, the outfits the Pilgrims are shown wearing are wrong. The complete series was shown at Independence Hall in Philadelphia from 1913 to 1930, in later years it was shown in a number of locations, including the Smithsonian Institution, before being returned to the Ferris family. Ferris, who had married Annette Amelia Ryder in 1894 and with whom had had a daughter named Elizabeth Mary, although his works were widely popular for many years, modern critics are far less generous in their praise. Media related to Jean Leon Gerome Ferris at Wikimedia Commons
2.
Plymouth Colony
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Plymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in North America from 1620 to 1691. The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plymouth, the settlement served as the capital of the colony, and is the modern town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. At its height, Plymouth Colony occupied most of the portion of the modern state of Massachusetts. Plymouth Colony was founded by a group of Separatists initially known as the Brownist Emigration and Anglicans, who came to be known as the Pilgrims. The colony was able to establish a treaty with Chief Massasoit which helped to ensure its success, in this, they were aided by Squanto and it played a central role in King Philips War, one of the earliest of the Indian Wars. Ultimately, the colony was merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony, despite the colonys relatively short existence, Plymouth holds a special role in American history. The social and legal systems of the colony became closely tied to their religious beliefs, many of the people and events surrounding Plymouth Colony have become part of American folklore, including the North American tradition known as Thanksgiving and the monument known as Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Colony was founded by a group of English separatists who later came to be known as the Pilgrims, the core group was part of a Congregationalist congregation led by William Bradford. The congregation began to feel the pressures of religious persecution while still in the English village of Scrooby, near East Retford, in 1607, Archbishop Tobias Matthew raided homes and imprisoned several members of the congregation. The congregation then left England in 1609 and emigrated to the Netherlands, first to Amsterdam, in Leiden, the congregation gained the freedom to worship as they chose, but Dutch society was unfamiliar to them. Scrooby had been a community, whereas Leiden was a thriving industrial center. The community remained close-knit, but their children began adopting Dutch language and customs, the Separatists were also still not free from the persecutions of the English Crown. English authorities came to Leiden to arrest William Brewster in 1618, after he published comments critical of the King of England. Brewster escaped arrest, but the events spurred the congregation to move farther from England. This land patent allowed them to settle at the mouth of the Hudson River and they then sought financing through the Merchant Adventurers, a group of businessmen who principally viewed the colony as a means of making a profit. Upon arriving in America, the Pilgrims began working to repay their debts, using the financing secured from the Merchant Adventurers, the Colonists bought provisions and obtained passage on two ships, the Mayflower and the Speedwell. The Congregation and the colonists finally boarded the Speedwell in July 1620 in the Dutch port of Delfshaven. Speedwell was re-rigged with larger masts before leaving Holland and setting out to meet Mayflower in Southampton, the Mayflower was purchased in London
3.
Mayflower
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The Mayflower was the ship that transported the first English Separatists, known today as the Pilgrims, from Plymouth, England to the New World in 1620. There were 102 passengers, and the crew is estimated to have been about 30 and this voyage has become an iconic story in some of the earliest annals of American history, with its story of death and of survival in the harsh New England winter environment. The culmination of the voyage in the signing of the Mayflower Compact was an event which established a form of democracy. There was a ship named Mayflower that made the London to Plymouth. This was the cause of the voyage from England to America taking more than two months. The Mayflowers return trip to London in April–May 1621 took less than half that time, by 1620, the Mayflower was aging, nearing the end of the usual working life of an English merchant ship in that era, some 15 years. No dimensions of her hull can be stated exactly, since this was years before such measurements were standardized. She probably measured about 100 feet in length from the end at the beak of her prow to the tip of her stern superstructure aft. She was about 25 feet at her widest point, with the bottom of her keel about 12 feet below the waterline, although William Bradford was not a mariner, he estimated that Mayflower had a cargo capacity of 180 tons. What is known on the basis of surviving records from that time is that she could certainly accommodate 180 casks of wine in her cargo hold, the casks were great barrels that each held hundreds of gallons of claret wine. This was a ship that traditionally was heavily armed while on trading routes around Europe, due to the possibility of encountering pirates, and with its armament, the ship and crew could easily be conscripted by the English monarch at any time in case of conflict with other nations. The general layout of the ship was as follows, Three masts, mizzen, main, and fore, Three primary levels, main deck, gun deck, and cargo hold. Aft on the deck in the stern was the cabin for Master Christopher Jones. Forward of that was the room, which housed a whipstaff for sailing control, not a wheel. Also here was the compass and probably also berths for the ships officers. Forward of the room was the capstan, a vertical axle used to pull in ropes or cables. Far forward on the deck, just aft of the bow, was the forecastle space where the ships cook prepared meals for the crew. The poop deck was above the cabin of Master Jones, on the ships highest level above the stern on the aft castle, the poop house was on this deck, which may have been for passengers use either for sleeping or cargo
4.
Puritans
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Puritanism in this sense was founded as an activist movement within the Church of England. The founders, clergy exiled under Mary I, returned to England shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, Puritanism played a significant role in English history during the first half of the 17th century. One of the most effective stokers of anti-Catholic feeling was John Pym, Puritans were blocked from changing the established church from within and were severely restricted in England by laws controlling the practice of religion. They took on distinctive beliefs about clerical dress and in opposition to the episcopal system and they largely adopted Sabbatarianism in the 17th century, and were influenced by millennialism. Consequently, they became a political force in England and came to power as a result of the First English Civil War. Almost all Puritan clergy left the Church of England after the Restoration of 1660, the nature of the movement in England changed radically, although it retained its character for a much longer period in New England. Puritans by definition were dissatisfied with the extent of the English Reformation. They formed and identified with various groups advocating greater purity of worship and doctrine, as well as personal. Puritans adopted a Reformed theology and, in sense, were Calvinists. In church polity, some advocated separation from all other established Christian denominations in favor of autonomous gathered churches. The Puritans were never a formally defined sect or religious division within Protestantism, the Congregationalist tradition, widely considered to be a part of the Reformed tradition, claims descent from the Puritans. Historically, the word Puritan was considered a term that characterized Protestant groups as extremists. According to Thomas Fuller in his Church History, the dates to 1564. Archbishop Matthew Parker of that used it and precisian with the sense of the modern stickler. In modern times, the word puritan is often used to mean against pleasure, in this sense, the term Puritan was coined in the 1560s, when it first appeared as a term of abuse for those who found the Elizabethan Religious Settlement of 1559 inadequate. The term Puritan, therefore, was not intended to refer to strict morality, a common modern misunderstanding, the word Puritan was applied unevenly to a number of Protestant churches from the late 16th century onwards. Puritans did not originally use the term for themselves, the practitioners knew themselves as members of particular churches or movements, and not by a single term. Precise men and Precisians were other early derogatory terms for Puritans, seventeenth century English Puritan preacher Thomas Watson used the godly to describe Puritans in the title of one of his more famous works The Godly Mans Picture
5.
James VI and I
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James VI and I 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. The kingdoms of Scotland and England were individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciary, and laws, though both were ruled by James in personal union. James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, James succeeded to the Scottish throne at the age of thirteen months, after his mother Mary was compelled to abdicate in his favour. Four different regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, in 1603, he succeeded the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, Elizabeth I, who died without issue. He continued to reign in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known after him as the Jacobean era, until his death in 1625 at the age of 58. After the Union of the Crowns, he based himself in England from 1603, only returning to Scotland once in 1617 and he was a major advocate of a single parliament for England and Scotland. In his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and British colonization of the Americas began, at 57 years and 246 days, Jamess reign in Scotland was longer than those of any of his predecessors. He achieved most of his aims in Scotland but faced difficulties in England, including the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. James himself was a scholar, the author of works such as Daemonologie, The True Law of Free Monarchies. He sponsored the translation of the Bible that would later be named after him, Sir Anthony Weldon claimed that James had been termed the wisest fool in Christendom, an epithet associated with his character ever since. Since the latter half of the 20th century, historians have tended to revise Jamess reputation and treat him as a serious, James was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Both Mary and Darnley were great-grandchildren of Henry VII of England through Margaret Tudor, Marys rule over Scotland was insecure, and she and her husband, being Roman Catholics, faced a rebellion by Protestant noblemen. James was born on 19 June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, and as the eldest son and heir apparent of the monarch automatically became Duke of Rothesay and Prince and he was baptised Charles James or James Charles on 17 December 1566 in a Catholic ceremony held at Stirling Castle. His godparents were Charles IX of France, Elizabeth I of England, Mary refused to let the Archbishop of St Andrews, whom she referred to as a pocky priest, spit in the childs mouth, as was then the custom. The subsequent entertainment, devised by Frenchman Bastian Pagez, featured men dressed as satyrs and sporting tails, Jamess father, Darnley, was murdered on 10 February 1567 at Kirk o Field, Edinburgh, perhaps in revenge for Rizzios death. James inherited his fathers titles of Duke of Albany and Earl of Ross, Mary was already unpopular, and her marriage on 15 May 1567 to James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was widely suspected of murdering Darnley, heightened widespread bad feeling towards her. In June 1567, Protestant rebels arrested Mary and imprisoned her in Loch Leven Castle and she was forced to abdicate on 24 July 1567 in favour of the infant James and to appoint her illegitimate half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, as regent. The care of James was entrusted to the Earl and Countess of Mar, to be conserved, nursed, and upbrought in the security of Stirling Castle
6.
Provincetown Harbor
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Provincetown Harbor is a large natural harbor located in the town of Provincetown, Massachusetts. A tall green buoy east of Long Point marks the entrance to Provincetown Harbor from Cape Cod Bay, most of Cape Cod was created by the Laurentide Glacier between 18,000 and 15,000 years ago. Near this cape we came to anchor in fifteen fathoms, where we took great store of codfish, for which we altered the name, here we saw sculls of herring, mackerel, and other small fish, in great abundance. This is a low sandy shoal, but without danger. John Smith explored the harbor in 1614 and wrote, Cape Cod. is only a headland of high hills of sand, overgrown with pines, hurts, and such trash. This Cape is made by the sea on the one side. Provincetown Harbor was the initial anchoring place of the Pilgrims traveling on the Mayflower in 1620, before they proceeded to Plymouth, thoreau later observed that Smiths description of the harbor may have been less colored by the hardships of transoceanic troubles than the Pilgrims. The Mayflower held several different passengers in addition to the Pilgrims on its first transoceanic voyage, before coming ashore at the extreme northwest corner of the harbor, the Pilgrims and other settlers signed the Mayflower Compact in the harbor on November 11,1620. Dorothy Bradford, the first wife of William Bradford, was one of the first adult Pilgrims to die in the New World. According to the only written description of her death from close to when it actually occurred, she fell overboard from the Mayflower in Provincetown Harbor on December 17,1620. Peregrine White, the first child born to the Pilgrims in New England, was born while they were in Provincetown Harbor. From 1818 until the 1850s a fishing village existed at Long Point, complete with a post office, schoolhouse,6 windmills for saltworks, when the families left in the 1850s, they floated their homes a mile across the harbor, where many still stand today. During the American Civil War, the military established defensive artillery positions at this location. The Long Point Battery would come to be known as Fort Useless, today, Long Point is a ghost village, and nothing remains save for the Long Point Light, which had been replaced by a new light in 1875. For the better part of history, the eastern part of Provincetown harbor was connected to yet another harbor. East Harbor was the most protected mooring place in the outer Cape for boats using Cape Cod Bay, East Harbor had a 1, 000-foot-wide inlet from Provincetown Harbor, as shown in the adjacent map from 1836. A wooden bridge was erected over the East Harbor in 1854, only to be destroyed by a winter storm and this made Provincetown much like an island, in that it relied almost entirely upon its harbor for its communication, travel, and commerce needs. The East Harbor thus became a lake, connected to Provincetown Harbor only through a culvert in the dike, and in 1910, tidal flow was successfully restored by the National Park Service working together with other local, state, and federal agencies
7.
Cape Cod
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Cape Cod is a geographic cape extending into the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern corner of mainland Massachusetts, in the northeastern United States. Its historic, maritime character and ample beaches attract heavy tourism during the summer months, as defined by the Cape Cod Commissions enabling legislation, Cape Cod is conterminous with Barnstable County, Massachusetts. It extends from Provincetown in the northeast to Woods Hole in the southwest, since 1914, Cape Cod has been separated from the mainland by the Cape Cod Canal. The canal cuts 17.5 miles roughly across the base of the peninsula, though portions of the Cape Cod towns of Bourne. Two highway bridges cross the Cape Cod Canal, the Sagamore Bridge, in addition, the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge carries railway freight and limited passenger services onto the Cape. Cape territory is divided into fifteen towns with many villages, like Cape Cod itself, the islands south of the Cape have evolved from whaling and trading areas to become resort destinations, attracting wealthy families, celebrities, and other tourists. Both islands are also famous summer tourist destinations, commonly accessed by ferry from several locations on the cape, the phrases Cape Cod and the Islands and the Cape and Islands are often used to describe the whole region of Barnstable County, Dukes County, and Nantucket County. Several small islands right off Cape Cod, including Monomoy Island, Monomoscoy Island, Popponesset Island, the Forbes family-owned Naushon Island was first purchased by John Murray Forbes. Naushon is one of the Elizabeth Islands, many of which are privately owned, one of the publicly accessible Elizabeths is the southernmost island in the chain, Cuttyhunk, with a year-round population of 52 people. Cape Cod in particular is a retirement area,27. 8% of the population of Barnstable County is 65 years old or older. And the average age of residents is the highest of any area in New England, by voter registration numbers, Democrats outnumber Republicans by less in the three counties than in the whole of Massachusetts, to varying degrees. The name Cape Cod, as it was first used in 1602 and it remained that way for 125 years, until the Precinct of Cape Cod was incorporated as the Town of Provincetown. No longer in use over the ensuing decades, the name came to mean all of the land east of the Manomet and Scusset rivers – essentially along the line that became the Cape Cod Canal. The creation of the canal separated the majority of the peninsula from the mainland, most agencies, including the Cape Cod Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, treat the Cape as an island with regard to disaster preparedness, groundwater management, and the like. Cape Cod Bay lies in between Cape Cod and the mainland – bounded on the north by a line between Provincetown and Marshfield. North of Cape Cod Bay is Massachusetts Bay, which contains the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, the Atlantic Ocean is to the east of Cape Cod, and to the southwest of the Cape is Buzzards Bay. The Cape Cod Canal, completed in 1916, connects Buzzards Bay to Cape Cod Bay, Cape Cod extends 65 miles into the Atlantic Ocean, with a breadth of between 1–20 miles, and covers more than 400 miles of shoreline. Its elevation ranges from 306 feet at its highest point, at the top of Pine Hill, in the Bourne portion of Joint Base Cape Cod, one of the biggest barrier islands in the world, Cape Cod shields much of the Massachusetts coastline from North Atlantic storm waves
8.
Julian calendar
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The Julian calendar, proposed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, was a reform of the Roman calendar. It took effect on 1 January 45 BC, by edict, the Julian calendar gains against the mean tropical year at the rate of one day in 128 years. For the Gregorian the figure is one day in 3,030 years, the difference in the average length of the year between Julian and Gregorian is 0. 002%. The Julian calendar has a year of 365 days divided into 12 months. A leap day is added to February every four years, the Julian year is, therefore, on average 365.25 days long. It was intended to approximate the tropical year, as a result, the calendar year gains about three days every four centuries compared to observed equinox times and the seasons. This discrepancy was corrected by the Gregorian reform of 1582, consequently, the Julian calendar is currently 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. Egypt converted on 20 December 1874/1 January 1875, turkey switched on 16 February/1 March 1917. Russia changed on 1/14 February 1918, Greece made the change for civil purposes on 16 February/1 March 1923 - the national day, which was a religious holiday, was to remain on the old calendar. Most Christian denominations in the west and areas evangelised by western churches have replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian as the basis for their liturgical calendars. However, most branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church still use the Julian calendar for calculating the date of Easter, some Orthodox churches have adopted the Revised Julian calendar for the observance of fixed feasts, while other Orthodox churches retain the Julian calendar for all purposes. The Julian calendar is used by the Berbers of the Maghreb in the form of the Berber calendar. In the form of the Alexandrian calendar, it is the basis for the Ethiopian calendar, during the changeover between calendars and for some time afterwards, dual dating was used in documents and gave the date according to both systems. In contemporary as well as texts that describe events during the period of change. The ordinary year in the previous Roman calendar consisted of 12 months, in addition, a 27- or 28-day intercalary month, the Mensis Intercalaris, was sometimes inserted between February and March. The net effect was to add 22 or 23 days to the year, some say the mensis intercalaris always had 27 days and began on either the first or the second day after the Terminalia. According to the later writers Censorinus and Macrobius, the ideal intercalary cycle consisted of ordinary years of 355 days alternating with intercalary years, alternately 377 and 378 days long. In this system, the average Roman year would have had 366 1⁄4 days over four years, Macrobius describes a further refinement whereby, in one 8-year period within a 24-year cycle, there were only three intercalary years, each of 377 days
9.
Gregorian calendar
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The Gregorian calendar is internationally the most widely used civil calendar. It is named after Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced it in October 1582, the calendar was a refinement to the Julian calendar involving a 0. 002% correction in the length of the year. The motivation for the reform was to stop the drift of the calendar with respect to the equinoxes and solstices—particularly the northern vernal equinox, transition to the Gregorian calendar would restore the holiday to the time of the year in which it was celebrated when introduced by the early Church. The reform was adopted initially by the Catholic countries of Europe, the last European country to adopt the reform was Greece, in 1923. Many countries that have used the Islamic and other religious calendars have come to adopt this calendar for civil purposes. The reform was a modification of a made by Aloysius Lilius. His proposal included reducing the number of years in four centuries from 100 to 97. Lilius also produced an original and practical scheme for adjusting the epacts of the moon when calculating the date of Easter. For example, the years 1700,1800, and 1900 are not leap years, but the years 1600 and 2000 are. The canonical Easter tables were devised at the end of the third century, when the vernal equinox fell either on 20 March or 21 March depending on the years position in the leap year cycle. As the rule was that the full moon preceding Easter was not to precede the equinox, the date was fixed at 21 March for computational purposes, the Gregorian calendar reproduced these conditions by removing ten days. To unambiguously specify a date, dual dating or Old Style, dual dating gives two consecutive years for a given date, because of differences in the starting date of the year, and/or to give both the Julian and the Gregorian dates. The Gregorian calendar continued to use the calendar era, which counts years from the traditional date of the nativity. This year-numbering system, also known as Dionysian era or Common Era, is the predominant international standard today, the Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar. A regular Gregorian year consists of 365 days, but as in the Julian calendar, in a leap year, in the Julian calendar a leap year occurs every 4 years, but the Gregorian calendar omits 3 leap days every 400 years. In the Julian calendar, this day was inserted by doubling 24 February. In the modern period, it has become customary to number the days from the beginning of the month, some churches, notably the Roman Catholic Church, delay February festivals after the 23rd by one day in leap years. Gregorian years are identified by consecutive year numbers, the cycles repeat completely every 146,097 days, which equals 400 years
