USS Massachusetts (Battleship No. 2) was an Indiana-classbattleship and the second United States Navy ship comparable to foreign battleships of the time. Authorized in 1890 and commissioned six years later, she was a small battleship, though with heavy armor and ordnance. The ship class also pioneered the use of an intermediate battery. She was designed for coastal defense and as a result her decks were not safe from high waves on the open ocean.
Anne Hutchinson, born Anne Marbury (1591–1643), was a Puritan woman, spiritual adviser, mother of 15, and important participant in the Antinomian Controversy that shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. Her strong religious convictions were at odds with the established Puritan clergy in the Boston area, and her popularity and charisma helped create a theological schism that threatened to destroy the Puritans' religious experiment in New England. She was eventually tried and convicted, then banished from the colony with many of her supporters. With encouragement from Providence founder, Roger Williams, Hutchinson and many of her supporters established the settlement of Portsmouth in what became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. After her husband's death she moved to New Netherland near an ancient landmark called Split Rock in what later became The Bronx in New York City. Here all but one of the 16 members of her household were massacred during an attack, the only survivor being her nine-year old daughter, Susanna, who was taken captive. Her well-publicised trials and the accusations against her make Hutchinson the most famous, or infamous, English woman in colonial American history. (Full article...)
Image 14Largest self-reported ancestry groups in New England. Americans of Irish descent form a plurality in most of Massachusetts, while Americans of English descent form a plurality in much of the central parts of Vermont and New Hampshire as well as nearly all of Maine. (from New England)
Image 15Ethnic origins in New England (from New England)
Image 35A political and geographical map of New England shows the coastal plains in the southeast, and hills, mountains and valleys in the west and the north. (from New England)
Image 55The MBTA Commuter Rail serves eastern Massachusetts and parts of Rhode Island, radiating from downtown Boston, with planned service to New Hampshire. The CTrail system operates the Shore Line East and Hartford Line, covering coastal Connecticut, Hartford, and Springfield, Massachusetts. (from New England)
... that Cora Agnes Benneson, one of the first female lawyers in New England, was rejected by Harvard Law School because "the equipments were too limited to make suitable provision for receiving women"?
... that Puritan Reverend John Wilson implored Mary Dyer to repent and not be "carried away by deceit of the devil" before her execution in Boston as a Quaker martyr?
Rhode Island was the first of the original Thirteen Colonies to declare independence from British rule, declaring itself independent on May 4, 1776, two months before any other colony. The State was also the last of the thirteen original colonies to ratify the United States Constitution.
Rhode Island's official nickname is "The Ocean State," a reference to the State's geography, since Rhode Island has several large bays and inlets that amount to about fourteen (14) percent of its total area. Its land area is 1,045 square miles (2706 km2), but its total area is significantly larger. (Full article...)
