American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War known as the American War of Independence, was an 18th-century war between Great Britain and its Thirteen Colonies which declared independence as the United States of America. After 1765, growing philosophical and political differences strained the relationship between Great Britain and its colonies. Patriot protests against taxation without representation followed the Stamp Act and escalated into boycotts, which culminated in 1773 with the Sons of Liberty destroying a shipment of tea in Boston Harbor. Britain responded by closing Boston Harbor and passing a series of punitive measures against Massachusetts Bay Colony. Massachusetts colonists responded with the Suffolk Resolves, they established a shadow government which wrested control of the countryside from the Crown. Twelve colonies formed a Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance, establishing committees and conventions that seized power. British attempts to disarm the Massachusetts militia in Concord led to open combat on April 19, 1775.
Militia forces besieged Boston, forcing a British evacuation in March 1776, Congress appointed George Washington to command the Continental Army. Concurrently, the Americans failed decisively in an attempt to invade Quebec and raise insurrection against the British. On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted for independence, issuing its declaration on July 4. Sir William Howe launched a British counter-offensive, capturing New York City and leaving American morale at a low ebb. However, victories at Trenton and Princeton restored American confidence. In 1777, the British launched an invasion from Quebec under John Burgoyne, intending to isolate the New England Colonies. Instead of assisting this effort, Howe took his army on a separate campaign against Philadelphia, Burgoyne was decisively defeated at Saratoga in October 1777. Burgoyne's defeat had drastic consequences. France formally allied with the Americans and entered the war in 1778, Spain joined the war the following year as an ally of France but not as an ally of the United States.
In 1780, the Kingdom of Mysore attacked the British in India, tensions between Great Britain and the Netherlands erupted into open war. In North America, the British mounted a "Southern strategy" led by Charles Cornwallis which hinged upon a Loyalist uprising, but too few came forward. Cornwallis Cowpens, he retreated to Yorktown, intending an evacuation, but a decisive French naval victory deprived him of an escape. A Franco-American army led by the Comte de Rochambeau and Washington besieged Cornwallis' army and, with no sign of relief, he surrendered in October 1781. Whigs in Britain had long opposed the pro-war Tories in Parliament, the surrender gave them the upper hand. In early 1782, Parliament voted to end all offensive operations in America, but the war continued overseas. Britain scored a major victory over the French navy. On September 3, 1783, the belligerent parties signed the Treaty of Paris in which Great Britain agreed to recognize the sovereignty of the United States and formally end the war.
French involvement had proven decisive. Spain failed in its primary aim of recovering Gibraltar; the Dutch were compelled to cede territory to Great Britain. In India, the war against Mysore and its allies concluded in 1784 without any territorial changes. Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765 to pay for British military troops stationed in the American colonies after the French and Indian War. Parliament had passed legislation to regulate trade, but the Stamp Act introduced a new principle of a direct internal tax. Americans began to question the extent of the British Parliament's power in America, the colonial legislatures argued that they had exclusive right to impose taxes within their jurisdictions. Colonists condemned the tax because their rights as Englishmen protected them from being taxed by a Parliament in which they had no elected representatives. Parliament argued that the colonies were "represented virtually", an idea, criticized throughout the Empire. Parliament did repeal the act in 1766, but it affirmed its right to pass laws that were binding on the colonies.
From 1767, Parliament began passing legislation to raise revenue for the salaries of civil officials, ensuring their loyalty while inadvertently increasing resentment among the colonists, opposition soon became widespread. Enforcing the acts proved difficult; the seizure of the sloop Liberty in 1768 on suspicions of smuggling triggered a riot. In response, British troops occupied Boston, Parliament threatened to extradite colonists to face trial in England. Tensions rose after the murder of Christopher Seider by a customs official in 1770 and escalated into outrage after British troops fired on civilians in the Boston Massacre. In 1772, colonists in Rhode Island burned a customs schooner. Parliament repealed all taxes except the one on tea, passing the Tea Act in 1773, attempting to force colonists to buy East India Company tea on which the Townshend duties were paid, thus implicitly agreeing to Parliamentary supremacy; the landing of the tea was resisted in all colonies, but the governor of Massachusetts permitted British tea ships to remain in Boston Harbor, so the Sons of Liberty destroyed the tea chests in what became known as the "Boston Tea Party".
Parliament passed punitive legislation. It closed Boston Harbor until the tea was paid for and revoked the Massachusetts Charter, taking upon themselves the right to directly appoint the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Additionally, t
Fell's Point, Baltimore
Fells Point is a historic waterfront neighborhood in southeastern Baltimore, Maryland. It was established around 1763 and is located along the north shore of the Baltimore Harbor and the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River; the area has many antique and other stores, coffee bars, a municipal markethouse with individual stalls, over 120 pubs. Located 1.5 miles east of Baltimore's downtown central business district and the Jones Falls stream, Fells Point has a maritime past and the air of a seafaring town. It has the greatest concentration of drinking establishments and restaurants in the city; the neighborhood has been the home of large immigrant populations of Irish, Germans and other Eastern European nationalities such as Ukrainians, Russians and Slovaks, throughout its 250-year-old history. Since the 1970s, a increasing number of middle- to upper-middle-income residents has moved into the area and preserving historic homes and businesses. Upper Fells Point to the north along Broadway has gained a sizable Hispanic population from waves of Mexican and Central American immigrants since the 1980s, is sometimes now called "Spanish Town".
This waterfront community is a tourist destination and can be reached by water taxi barges, as well as by bus or car. Fells Point is one of several areas in and around Baltimore that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the first designated from Maryland, is one of the first registered historic districts in the United States to combine two separate waterfront communities. First described by a European seafarer as "Long Island Point" in 1670, the area to be known as Fells Point was a thin little peninsula jutting out southwestward between the streams of Jones Falls and Harford Run to the west and Harris Creek to the east and further east to Colgate Creek. Land was patented with the title of "Copus Harbor". Nearby Baltimore Town to the west at the headwater of the Patapsco River's Northwest Branch was land patented under the name of "Cole's Harbor" and "Todd's Range" to William Cole and sold to Charles and Daniel Carroll; this area was established as a "port of entry" by the General Assembly of the Province of Maryland in 1706.
After several local farmers and plantation owners planning to establish a town on the northeastern shores of the Middle Branch of the Patapsco were stymied by the objections of local owner William Moale, who thought the land was too valuable as a site of iron ore deposits. So the new town site was moved further to the northeast to the head of the Northwest Branch. Established as a town by the authority of the Colonial Assembly on July 30, 1729, several streets were laid out in the "Original Survey" of January 12, 1730, with the main one going east-to-west called "Long Street" and several others intersecting from north-to-south such as Forrest, running north from "The Basin" in 1730. Joined in 1732, to the northeast along the banks of the stream "Jones Falls" by the laying out of several streets on a northwest to southeast angle by David Jones and named "Jones's Town" with streets such as Front and Low. Founded by William Fell, attracted by its deep water and proximity to agriculture and thick forests, Fell's Point became a shipbuilding and commercial center.
About 1763, William's son Edward Fell began selling plots for homes. The town grew and incorporated with Baltimore Town and Jones Town in 1773 to form a new Town of Baltimore and in 1797 becoming the City of Baltimore; the area grew wealthy on the tobacco and coffee trades through the 18th and 19th centuries. Fell's Point shipyards became best known for producing topsail schooners, sometimes erroneously called "Baltimore clippers", renowned for their great speed and handling, they were excellent blockade runners, were used as armed privateers. The "Pride of Baltimore II" is based on the "Chasseur", built by Thomas Kemp, one of the most successful privateers built in Fell's Point during the War of 1812. During the War of 1812, Fells Point's yards built and supported dozens of privateers which preyed on British shipping vessels. Baltimore became a principal target of the British during the war, referred to as a "nest of pirates", which led to the attack on the city and the bombardment of Fort McHenry in September 1814.
Another growth industry in Fells Point was immigration, it became a major point of entry into the United States. Since jobs were plentiful in shipbuilding and in the warehouses and factories, many of the immigrants stayed in Fells Point; this added to the multicultural fabric of the area, but caused the more affluent to move into other parts of the city. In 1835, Frederick Douglass, while still enslaved, was hired out to a shipbuilder on Fells Point. In his memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass recounts that, years earlier, the first time he had been sent to Baltimore, the Fells Point neighborhood was where he taught himself to read and
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Baltimore)
The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary called the Baltimore Basilica, was the first Roman Catholic cathedral built in the United States, was among the first major religious buildings constructed in the nation after the adoption of the U. S. Constitution; as a co-cathedral, it is one of the seats of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore in Baltimore, Maryland. Additionally it is national shrine, it is considered the masterpiece of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, the "Father of American Architecture". The Basilica was constructed between 1806 and 1863 to a design of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, America's first professionally trained architect and Thomas Jefferson's Architect of the U. S. Capitol, it was built under the guidance of the first American bishop of the Roman Catholic Church, John Carroll. The Basilica was blessed and opened for use on May 31, 1821, by the third Archbishop of Baltimore, Ambrose Maréchal, it was consecrated on May 1876 by Archbishop James Roosevelt Bayley.
Many famous events have occurred within its walls, including the funeral Mass of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll had been the last of the surviving signers. Most of the first American bishops were consecrated here to fill the ever-multiplying dioceses necessitated by the young country's territorial expansion and great waves of immigration; until recent years, more priests were ordained at the Baltimore Basilica than in any other church in the United States. The building hosted many of the 19th century meetings that shaped the Catholic Church in America, including seven Provincial Councils and three Plenary Councils. Among other effects, these led to the founding of The Catholic University of America and efforts to evangelize African and Native Americans to Catholicism; the Third Plenary Council, the largest meeting of Catholic bishops held outside Rome since the Council of Trent, commissioned the Baltimore Catechism. In 1937, Pope Pius XI raised the Cathedral to the rank of a Minor Basilica.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969, two years was declared a National Historic Landmark. In 1993, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops designated the Basilica as a National Shrine; the Cathedral Hill Historic District takes its name from the Basilica being located there. Many people deemed holy by the Catholic Church are associated with the Basilica, including the Servant of God Mother Mary Lange, Foundress of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first order for Catholic nuns of African-American descent; the Basilica has welcomed millions of visitors, including Pope Saint John Paul II in 1995, Saint Teresa of Calcutta in 1996, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople in 1997. The building has been visited by at least 20 other saints or potential saints; the Cathedral is a monumental neoclassical-style building designed in conformity to a Latin cross basilica plan — a departure on Latrobe's part from previous American church architecture, but in keeping with longstanding European traditions of cathedral design.
The plan unites two distinct elements: a domed space. The main facade is a classical Greek portico with Ionic columns arranged in double hexastyle pattern behind which rise a pair of cylindrical towers. Architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock believed that the onion-shaped domes atop the two towers were “not of Latrobe's design,” but now it is believed that they "were the architect's own." The exterior walls are constructed of silver-gray gneiss quarried from the Ellicott City Granodiorite. Latrobe planned a masonry dome with a lantern on top, but his friend Thomas Jefferson suggested a wooden double-shell dome with 24 half-visible skylights. For the inner dome Latrobe created a solid, classically detailed masonry hemisphere. Grids of plaster rosettes adorn its coffered ceiling; the interior is occupied by a massive dome at the crossing of the Latin cross plan, creating a centralizing effect which contrasts the exterior impression of a linear or oblong building. Surrounding the main dome is a sophisticated system of barrel vaults and shallow, saucer-like secondary domes.
The light-filled interior designed by Latrobe was striking in contrast to the dark, cavernous recesses of traditional Gothic cathedrals. The Basilica houses many precious works of art, including two heroic portraits: the first depicts the Descent from the Cross by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin and the second, by Baron Charles de Steuben, depicts Louis IX of France burying his plague-stricken troops before the siege of Tunis at the beginning of the Eighth Crusade in 1270. Both portraits were gifts of King Louis XVIII of France shortly after the 1821 opening of the Basilica. A 32-month, $34 million restoration project was completed in 2006; the restoration included a total incorporation of modern systems throughout the building, while restoring the interior to Latrobe's original design. Many "misguided accretions" were corrected; the original wall colors were restored, as was the light-colored marble flooring which for decades had been a dark green color. Twenty-four skylights in the main dome were re-opened, the stained glass windows were given to St. Louis parish in Clarksville and replaced with clear glass windows.
Additionally, the Basilica'
The Baltimore Sun
The Baltimore Sun is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the American state of Maryland and provides coverage of local and regional news, issues and industries. Founded in 1837, the newspaper is owned by Tribune Publishing; the Sun was founded on May 17, 1837, by printer/editor/publisher/owner Arunah Shepherdson Abell and two associates, William Moseley Swain, Azariah H. Simmons from Philadelphia, where they had started and published the Public Ledger the year before. Abell was born in Rhode Island, where he began journalism with the Providence Patriot and worked with Newspapers in New York City and Boston; the Abell family and descendents owned The Sun (later after 1910 colloquially known in Baltimore as The Sunpapers until that same year of 1910, when the local Black and Garrett families of wealthy financial means invested funds in the paper under the suggestion of former rival owner/publisher of The News, Charles H. Grasty, they, along with Grasty gained a controlling interest.
That same year, an additional daily publication was established called The Evening Sun under the guidance of former reporter, editor/columnist Henry Louis Mencken, From 1947 to 1986, The Sun was the owner of Maryland's first television station, WMAR-TV, founded 1947 and longtime affiliate of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS television network, along with several radio stations. In the postwar years, The Sun expanded its overseas presence; the newspaper opened its first foreign bureau in London in 1924. Between 1955 and 1961, it added four new foreign offices; as Cold War tensions grew, it set up shop in Bonn, West Germany, in February 1955. Eleven months The Sun opened a Moscow bureau, becoming one of the first U. S. newspapers to do so. A Rome office followed in July 1957, in 1961, The Sun expanded to New Delhi. At its height, The Sun' ran eight foreign bureaus, giving rise to its boast in a 1983 advertisement that "The Sun never sets on the world."The paper was sold under recent non-family publisher Reg Murphy in 1986 to the Times-Mirror Company of the Los Angeles Times.
The same week, the 115 year old rivalry with The News American, came to an end, as that ancient old paper with publishing antecedents since 1773, with subsequent mergers, announced that it would fold. The oldest paper in the city, it had been owned by William Randolph Hearst and his Hearst Corporation since the 1920s. A decade in 1997, The Sun acquired the Patuxent Publishing Company, a local suburban newspaper publisher that had a stable of 15 weekly papers and a few magazines in several communities and counties. In the 1990s and 2000s, The Sun began cutting back its foreign coverage. In 1995 and 1996, closed its Tokyo, Mexico City and Berlin bureaus. Two more — Beijing and London — fell victim to cost-cutting in 2005; the final three bureaus — Moscow and Johannesburg, South Africa — fell a couple years later. All were closed by 2008, as the Tribune Co. streamlined and downsized the newspaper chain's foreign reporting. Some material from The Sun's foreign correspondents is archived at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
In the 21st century, The Sun, like most legacy newspapers in the United States, has suffered a number of setbacks in the competition with Internet and other sources, including a decline in readership and ads, a shrinking newsroom staff, competition in 2005 from a new free daily, The Baltimore Examiner that lasted two years to 2007, along with a similar Washington publication of a small chain started by new owners that took over the old Hearst flagship paper, the San Francisco Examiner. In 2000, the Times-Mirror company was purchased by the Tribune Company of Chicago. I, 2014 it transferred its newspapers, including The Sun, to Tribune Publishing. On September 19, 2005, again on August 24, 2008, The Baltimore Sun as the paper now titled itself, introduced new layout designs, its circulation as of 2010 was 343,552 on Sundays. On April 29, 2009, the Tribune Company announced that it would lay off 61 of the 205 staff members in the Sun newsroom. On September 23, 2011, it was reported that the Baltimore Sun would be moving its web edition behind a paywall starting October 10, 2011.
The Baltimore Sun is the flagship of the Baltimore Sun Media Group, which produces the b free daily newspaper and more than 30 other Baltimore metropolitan-area community newspapers and Web sites. BSMG content reaches more than one million Baltimore-area readers each week and is the region's most read source of news. On February 20, 2014, The Baltimore Sun Media Group announced that they would buy the alternative weekly City Paper. In April, the Sun acquired the Maryland publications of Landmark Media Enterprises. Although there is now only a morning edition, for many years there were two distinct newspapers—The Sun in the morning and The Evening Sun in the afternoon— each with its own separate reporting and editorial staff; the Evening Sun was first published in 1910 under the leadership of Charles H. Grasty, former owner of the Evening News, a firm believer in the evening circulation. For most of its existence, The Evening Sun led its morning sibling in circulation. In 1959, the afternoon edition's circulation was 220,174, compared to 196,675 for the morning edition.
However, by the 1980s, cultural and economic shifts in America were eating away at afternoon newspapers' market share, with readers flocking to either morning papers or switching to nightly televisi
Battle of North Point
The Battle of North Point was an engagement in the War of 1812, fought on September 12, 1814, between Brigadier General John Stricker's Third Brigade of the Maryland State Militia and a British landing force, composed of units from the British Army, Royal Navy seamen, Colonial Marines, Royal Marines, led by Major General Robert Ross and Rear Admiral George Cockburn. The events and result of the engagement, a part of the larger Battle of Baltimore, saw the U. S. forces retreating after having inflicted heavy casualties on the British. One of the casualties was Ross, killed during earlier skirmishes while approaching the American position on the old North Point Road south of the battlefield by American hidden sharpshooters, his death demoralized the troops under his command as his body was taken to the rear in a wheeled cart and left some units confused and lost among the woods and marshes of the Patapsco Neck peninsula. This prompted the British second-in-command, Colonel Arthur Brooke of the 44th Regiment of Foot, to decide to have his troops remain on the battlefield for the evening and night, treating the wounded at a nearby Methodist meeting house, evacuating some by barge south down Bear Creek to the offshore Fleet in the Patapsco River, thus delaying by a day his northwestward advance against Baltimore.
This delay gave the Americans more time to organize and strengthen the eastside defense of the city, under the command of Major General Samuel Smith, along an extensive network of trenches and artillery with a central strong point of "Rodgers' Bastion", commanded by U. S. Navy Commodore John Rodgers. Gen. Stricker retreated his organized militia back to the main defenses lines on Loudenschlager and Potter's Hills, cutting down trees across the roads to delay the British advance, rejoined the existing regular army and navy and civilian forces of 15,000 men and 100 cannons. Along with the failure of the Royal Navy to neutralize Fort McHenry guarding Baltimore Harbor, the resulting vast numerical superiority over the invading British force of 4,000 men and 4 cannons led to the subsequent abandonment two days of the planned sea and land assault on Baltimore. Major General Robert Ross had been dispatched to Chesapeake Bay with a brigade of veterans from the Duke of Wellington's army from the Spanish Peninsular Wars early in 1814, reinforced with a battalion of Royal Marines and seamen from the Royal Navy under Rear Admiral George Cockburn.
They had defeated a hastily assembled force of Maryland and District of Columbia state militia at the Battle of Bladensburg, northeast of Washington, D. C. on August 24, 1814, burned Washington, the new national capital but rough village. Having disrupted the American government, he withdrew to the waiting ships of the Royal Navy at Benedict, withdrawing down the Patuxent River before heading further up the Chesapeake Bay to the strategically more important port city of Baltimore, although the Americans managed to defeat a British landing at Caulk's Field on the Eastern Shore of the Bay and killing their commander, Captain Sir Peter Parker, before doing so. Ross's small army of 3,700 troops and 1,000 marines landed at North Point at the end of the peninsula between the Patapsco River and the Back River on the morning of September 12, 1814, began moving toward the city of Baltimore. Major General Samuel Smith of the Maryland militia anticipated the British move, dispatched Brigadier General John Stricker's column to meet them.
Stricker's force consisted of five regiments of Maryland militia, a small militia cavalry regiment from Maryland, a battalion of three volunteer rifle companies and a battery of six 4-pounder field guns. Stricker deployed his brigade halfway between Hampstead Hill, just outside Baltimore, where there were earthworks and artillery emplacements, North Point. At that point, several tidal creeks narrowed the peninsula to only a mile wide, it was considered an ideal spot for opposing the British before they reached the main American defensive positions. Stricker received intelligence that the British were camped at a farm just 3 miles from his headquarters, he deployed his men between Bear Creek and Bread and Cheese Creek, which offered cover from nearby woods, had a long wooden fence near the main road. Stricker placed the 5th Maryland Regiment and the 27th Maryland Regiment and his six guns in the front defensive line, with two regiments in support, one more in reserve, he placed his men in mutually supporting positions, relying on numerous swamps and the two streams to stop a British flank attack, all of which he hoped would help avoid another disaster such as Bladensburg.
The riflemen occupied a position some miles ahead of Stricker's main position, to delay the British advance. However, their commander, Captain William Dyer, hastily withdrew on hearing a rumour that British troops were landing from the Back River behind him, threatening to cut off his retreat. Stricker posted them instead on his right flank. At about midday on the 12th, Stricker heard the British had halted while the soldiers had a meal, some sailors attached to Ross's force plundered nearby farms, he decided it would be better to provoke a fight rather than wait for a possible British night attack. At 1:00 pm, he sent Major Richard Heath with 250 men and one cannon to draw the British to Stricker's main force. Heath soon began to engage the British pickets; when Ross heard the fighting, he left his meal and ran to the scene. His men attempted to drive out the concealed American riflemen. Re
Algonquian peoples
The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups. Today, thousands of individuals identify with various Algonquian peoples; the peoples were prominent along the Atlantic Coast and into the interior along the Saint Lawrence River and around the Great Lakes. This grouping consists of the peoples. Before Europeans came into contact, most Algonquian settlements lived by hunting and fishing, although quite a few supplemented their diet by cultivating corn and squash; the Ojibwe cultivated wild rice. The Algonquians of New England practiced a seasonal economy; the basic social unit was the village: a few hundred people related by a clan kinship structure. Villages were mobile; the people moved to locations of greatest natural food supply breaking into smaller units or gathering as the circumstances required. This custom resulted in a certain degree of cross-tribal mobility in troubled times. In warm weather, they constructed portable wigwams, a type of hut with buckskin doors.
In the winter, they erected the more substantial longhouses, in which more than one clan could reside. They cached food supplies in more semi-subterranean structures. In the spring, when the fish were spawning, they left the winter camps to build villages at coastal locations and waterfalls. In March, they caught moving about in birch bark canoes. In April, they netted alewife and salmon. In May, they caught cod with line in the ocean. Putting out to sea, the men hunted whales, porpoises and seals.dubious The women and children gathered scallops, mussels and crabs, all the basis of menus in New England today. From April through October, natives hunted migratory birds and their eggs: Canada geese, mourning doves and others. In July and August they gathered strawberries, raspberries and nuts. In September, they moved up the streams to the forest. There, the men hunted beaver, caribou and white-tailed deer. In December, when the snows began, the people created larger winter camps in sheltered locations, where they built or reconstructed longhouses.
February and March were lean times. The tribes in southern New England and other northern latitudes had to rely on cached food. Northerners developed a practice of going hungry for several days at a time. Historians hypothesize that this practice kept the population down, according to Liebig's law of the minimum. Northerners were food gatherers only; the southern Algonquians of New England burn agriculture. They cleared fields by burning for one or two years of cultivation, after which the village moved to another location; this is the reason the English found the region cleared and ready for planting. By using various kinds of native corn and squash, southern New England natives were able to improve their diet to such a degree that their population increased and they reached a density of 287 people per 100 square miles as opposed to 41 in the north. With mobile crop rotation, southern villages were less mobile than northern ones; the natives continued their seasonal occupation but tended to move into fixed villages near their lands.
They adjusted to the change by developing a gender-oriented division of labor. The women cultivated crops, the men fished and hunted. Scholars estimate that, by the year 1600, the indigenous population of New England had reached 70,000–100,000. At the time of the first European settlements in North America, Algonquian peoples occupied what is now New Brunswick, much of what is now Canada east of the Rocky Mountains, they were concentrated in the New England region. The homeland of the Algonquian peoples is not known. At the time of the European arrival, the hegemonic Iroquois Confederacy, based in present-day New York and Pennsylvania, was at war with Algonquian neighbours. There are three "tribes" with plant uses that can be found at http://naeb.brit.org/uses/tribes/6/, http://naeb.brit.org/uses/tribes/7/, http://naeb.brit.org/uses/tribes/8/. The latter, "Tete-de-Boule," is an early European name for the Atikamekw; the French and English encountered the Maliseet of present-day Maine and New Brunswick.
Further north are the Betsiamite, Atikamekw and Innu/Naskapi. The Beothuk of Newfoundland might have been Algonquians, but as their last known speaker died in the early 19th century, little record of their language or culture remains. Colonists in the Massachusetts Bay area first encountered the Wampanoag, Nipmuck, Penobscot and Quinnipiac; the Mohegan, Pocumtuc and Narragansett were based in southern New England. The Abenaki were located in northern New England: present-day Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont in what became the United States and eastern Quebec in what became Canada, they had established trading relationships with French colonists who settled along the Atlantic coast and what was called the Saint Lawrence River. The Mahican was located in western New England and in the upper Hudson River Valley (around what was developed by Europeans as Albany
Patapsco River
The Patapsco River mainstem is a 39-mile-long river in central Maryland which flows into the Chesapeake Bay. The river's tidal portion forms the harbor for the city of Baltimore. With its South Branch, the Patapsco forms the northern border of Maryland; the name "Patapsco" is derived from the Algonquian pota-psk-ut, which translates to "backwater" or "tide covered with froth." Captain John Smith was the first European to explore the river noting it on his 1612 map as the Bolus River. The "Red river", was named after the clay color, is considered the "old Bolus", as other branches were labelled Bolus on maps; as the river was not navigable beyond Elkridge, it was not a major path of commerce with only one ship listed as serving the northern branch, four others operating around the mouth in 1723. The Patapsco River is referred to as The River of History as it is regarded as the center of Maryland’s Industrial Revolution beginning in the 1770s. Milling and manufacturing operations abounded along the river throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries relying on water power generated by multiple small dams.
The nation’s first railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's original main line was constructed in 1829 and ran west along the Patapsco Valley. Many old railroad bridges were constructed in the valley, most notably the Thomas Viaduct, still intact, the Patterson Viaduct, of which ruins remain. Flour mills and the hydropower dam, Bloede Dam, built in 1907, were powered by the river; the valley is prone to periodic flooding. Modern floods include the 1868 flood that washed away 14 houses and killed 39 people around Ellicott City. A 1923 flood topped bridges while in 1952, an eight-foot wall of water swept the shops of Ellicott City. A 1956 flood inflicted heavy damage at the Bartigis Brothers plant. In 1972, as a result of rainfall from the remnants of Hurricane Agnes, Ellicott City and the Old Main Line sustained serious damage; the July 2016 Maryland flood ravaged Main Street leaving two dead, followed just two years by a flash flood on May 27, 2018 that took the life of one rescuer. The mouth of the Patapsco River forms Baltimore harbor, the site of the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812.
This is where Francis Scott Key, while aboard a British ship, wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner," a poem set to music as the national anthem of the United States. Today, a red and blue buoy marks the spot where HMS Tonnant was anchored; the Patapsco has a watershed area of 950 square miles. Through most of its length, the Patapsco is a minor river, flowing for the most part through a narrow valley; the last 10 miles, form a large tidal estuary inlet of Chesapeake Bay. The inner part of this estuary provides the harbor of Baltimore, composed of the Northwest Harbor and the Middle Branch including Thoms Cove; the Patapsco estuary is north of the Magothy River. The Patapsco River forms the harbor. Besides Baltimore, the river flows through Ellicott City and Elkridge; the Patapsco River mainstem begins at the confluence of the North and South Branches, near Marriottsville 15 miles west of downtown Baltimore. The 19.4-mile-long South Branch rises further west at Parr's Spring, where Howard County, Carroll and Montgomery counties meet.
The latter begins at elevation 780 feet on Parr's Ridge, just south of Interstate 70 and east of Ridge Road, two miles south of Mount Airy, Maryland. The South Branch Patapsco River traces the southern boundary of Carroll County and the northern boundary of Howard County; the first land record regarding Parr's Springs dates from 1744, when John Parr laid out a 200 acres tract he called Parr's Range. During the Civil War, Parr's Spring was a stop for the Army of the Potomac's Brig. Gen. David M. Gregg's cavalry, on June 29, 1863, while en route to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Parr's Spring was dug to form a 1.75 acres pond in the 1950's, filled by seven spring heads that form the headwaters of the South Branch of the Patapsco River. The North Branch flows 20.9 miles southward from its origins in Carroll County. Liberty Dam and its reservoir, located on the North Branch, is a major component of the Baltimore city water system. Patapsco Valley State Park extends along 32 miles of the Patapsco and its branches, encompassing a total of 14,000 acres in five different areas.
The river cuts a gorge 100–200 feet deep within the park, which features rocky cliffs and tributary waterfalls. Bloede's Dam,a hydroelectric dam built in 1906, was located on the Patapsco River within the Park, it was a nearly complete barrier to anadromous fish passage. Although a fish ladder was installed in 1992, it blocked five of six native fish species trying to run upstream to spawn. Impetus to remove Bloede's Dam began in the 1980s when nine drowning deaths occurred, to restore fish passage to a large portion of the Patapsco River watershed. Dam demolition began on September 12, 2018, opening the fishery and creating a rocky rapid for kayaking. Two dams upstream of Bloede's Dam and Union, were removed in 2010; the removal of Bloede's Dam leaves Daniels Dam, 9 miles upstream, as the last remaining dam along the mainstem Patapsco River. Removal of Bloede's Dam in September, 2018 opened up 65 miles of the Patapsco River watershed which will restore spawning runs of at least six species of native anadromous fish: alewife, blueback herring, American shad (Alosa sapid
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