Rhoda Sexton

Elizabeth (1533-1603) was Queen of England and Ireland. She was the last monarch of the House of Tudor and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". She was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

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. Although he wanted to bring about a closer union, the kingdoms of Scotland and England remained individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciaries, and laws, both ruled by James in personal union. James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots

On September 6, the Mayflower departed from Plymouth, England, and headed for America. The voyage itself across the Atlantic Ocean took 66 days, from their departure on September 6, until Cape Cod was sighted on 9 November 1620. The colonists spent that first winter living onboard the Mayflower.

Of the 102 passengers on the ship, which was 80 feet long and 24 feet wide, only 53 passengers and half the crew survived. Women were particularly hard hit; of the 19 women who had boarded the Mayflower, only five survived.

The Plymouth Colony is formed until 1685 when it is split into three counties: Plymouth, Barnstable, and Bristol

Caleb Johnson's Mayflower History

In July of 1630, Sir Richard Saltonstall and Reverend George Phillips and others from the Winthrop fleet row up the river from Charlestown and settle Watertown. In September, the settlement is officially incorporated into the Massachusetts Bay Colony as Watertown.

In 1665 The Old Burying Ground is established on what is now modern day Arlington Street.

On July 19, 1776 the Treaty of Watertown is signed at the Edmund Fowle House. The treaty establishes a military alliance between the United States and the St. John’s Indians and some of the Mi’kmaw bands against Great Britain in the Revolutionary War.

The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians ("Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of religious freedom. It was part of the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The first (1642–1646) and second (1648) wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third (1649–1651) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The wars also involved the Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates. The war ended with Parliamentarian victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.

Unlike other civil wars in England, which were mainly fought over who should rule, these conflicts were also concerned with how the three Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland should be governed. The outcome was threefold: the trial of and execution of Charles I (1649); the exile of his son, Charles II (1651); and the replacement of English monarchy with the Commonwealth of England. From 1653 the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland unified the British Isles under the personal rule of Oliver Cromwell (1653–1658), and briefly his son Richard (1658–1659).

In England, the monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship was ended, and in Ireland, the victors consolidated the established Protestant Ascendancy. Constitutionally, the outcome of the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament's consent, though the idea of Parliamentary sovereignty was legally established only as part of the Glorious Revolution in 1688.

Physicist, mathematician and inventor. Laid the foundation of classical mechanics, which formed the basis of physical science until Einstein. Formulated universal laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation. Demonstrated how these laws explained both the motion of planets and comets and objects on Earth. Invented a form of the calculus. Invented the first practical reflecting telescope. Proposed that Earth was an oblate spheroid. Calculated the speed of sound.

Middlesex County, Massachusetts was created on May 10, 1643 as one of four original counties created in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The county was named for the English county of Middlesex.

In 1652, English colonists purchased Old Dartmouth—a region of 115,000 acres (470 km2) that is now Dartmouth, Acushnet, New Bedford, Fairhaven, and Westport—in a treaty between the Wampanoag—represented by Chief Ousamequin (Massasoit) and his son Wamsutta—and high-ranking "Purchasers" and "Old Comers" from Plymouth Colony: John Winslow, William Bradford, Myles Standish, Thomas Southworth, and John Cooke.

According to the deed, in one year, all Natives previously living on the land would have to leave. This led to a lengthy land dispute as the deed did not define boundary lines, and the younger son of Massasoit, Metacomet, began to question the boundary lines of the purchase. Metacomet stated that he had not been consulted about the sale, and he had not given his written permission. The situation culminated with new boundaries drawn up by referees. Chief Massasoit gave his final permission to the changes in 1665.

The Great Plague of London, lasting from 1665 to 1666, was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England. It happened within the centuries-long Second Pandemic, a period of intermittent bubonic plague epidemics that originated in Central Asia in 1331 (the first year of the Black Death), and included related diseases such as pneumonic plague and septicemic plague, which lasted until 1750.

The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people—almost a quarter of London's population—in 18 months.

King Philip's War (sometimes called the First Indian War, Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, Pometacomet's Rebellion, or Metacom's Rebellion) was an armed conflict in 1675–1676 between indigenous inhabitants of New England and New England colonists and their indigenous allies. The war is named for Metacom, the Wampanoag chief who adopted the name Philip because of the friendly relations between his father Massasoit and the Mayflower Pilgrims. The war continued in the most northern reaches of New England until the signing of the Treaty of Casco Bay on April 12, 1678.

The war was the greatest calamity in seventeenth-century New England and is considered by many to be the deadliest war in Colonial American history. In the space of little more than a year, 12 of the region's towns were destroyed and many more were damaged, the economy of Plymouth and Rhode Island Colonies was all but ruined and their population was decimated, losing one-tenth of all men available for military service. More than half of New England's towns were attacked by Natives. Hundreds of Wampanoags and their allies were publicly executed or enslaved, and the Wampanoags were left effectively landless.

Plymouth Colony splits into three separate counties:

- Plymouth
- Barnstable
- Bristol

In 1691 they join the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Click on the image, which shows the year the cities were formed in the Colony through 1686.

Newport County, Rhode Island was created on June 22, 1703 as an Original County. The county was named for the town (now city) of Newport, Wales.

Benjamin Franklin was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, forger and political philosopher. Among the leading intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a drafter and signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, and the first United States Postmaster General.

The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. The target was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts. The Sons of Liberty strongly opposed the taxes in the Townshend Act as a violation of their rights. Protesters, some disguised as Indigenous Americans, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company.

In 1775 Scottish inventor Alexander Cumming was granted the first patent for a flush toilet. His greatest innovation was the S-shaped pipe below the bowl that used water to create a seal preventing sewer gas from entering through the toilet.

The American Revolutionary War, also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of the United States, fighting began on April 19, 1775, followed by the Lee Resolution on July 2, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The American Patriots were supported by the Kingdom of France and, to a lesser extent, the Kingdom of Spain and the Dutch Republic, in a conflict taking place in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean.

The United States Declaration of Independence, officially The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, is the pronouncement and founding document adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at Pennsylvania State House, which was later renamed Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. Enacted during the American Revolution, the Declaration explains why the Thirteen Colonies at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain regarded themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states and no longer subject to British colonial rule. With the Declaration, the 13 states took a collective first step in forming the United States and, de facto, formalized the American Revolutionary War, which had been ongoing since April 1775.

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (18 November 1787 – 10 July 1851) was a French artist and photographer, recognized for his invention of the eponymous daguerreotype process of photography. He became known as one of the fathers of photography. Though he is most famous for his contributions to photography, he was also an accomplished painter, scenic designer, and a developer of the diorama theatre.

1st president of the United States. Born Feb 22, 1732. Died Dec. 14, 1799 at the age of 67.

Designed to separate cotton fiber from seed, Eli Whitney's cotton gin, for which he received a patent on March 14, 1794, introduced a new, profitable technology to agricultural production in America. The cotton gin is a device for removing the seeds from cotton fiber.

The smallpox vaccine is the first vaccine to be developed against a contagious disease. In 1796, British physician Edward Jenner demonstrated that an infection with the relatively mild cowpox virus conferred immunity against the deadly smallpox virus. Not everyone was on board with Jenner and his vaccine. Rumors circulated at the time that it would turn people into cows. But by 1801, through extensive testing, it was shown to effectively protect against smallpox

In Jenner’s time, smallpox killed around 10 percent of the population, with the number as high as 20 percent in towns and cities where infection spread more easily. In 1821 he was appointed physician extraordinary to King George IV

The last natural outbreak of smallpox in the United States occurred in 1949.

2nd President of the United States. Born Oct. 30, 1735. Died Jul 4, 1826 at the age of 91.

3rd President of the United States. Born Apr 13, 1743. Died Jul 4, 1826 at the age of 83.

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He is famous for his novels that touch upon the sensitive issues of poverty, child labour, and slavery. Some of the books he is known for are Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations.

The War of 1812 was a conflict fought between the United States and the United Kingdom, and their respective allies from June 1812 to February 1815. Historians in Britain often see it as a minor theater of the Napoleonic Wars; in the United States and Canada, it is seen as a war in its own right.

Peace negotiations began in August 1814, and the Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24. News of the peace did not reach America for some time. Unaware of the treaty, British forces invaded Louisiana and were defeated at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815. These late victories were viewed by Americans as having restored national honour, leading to the collapse of anti-war sentiment and the beginning of the Era of Good Feelings, a period of national unity. News of the treaty arrived shortly thereafter, halting military operations. The treaty was unanimously ratified by the US Senate on February 17, 1815, ending the war with no boundary changes.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron) was an English mathematician and writer, known for her work on Charles Babbage's mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is sometimes regarded as the first to recognise the full potential of a "computing machine" and the first computer programmer.

Lovelace was the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron and his wife Anne Isabella "Annabella" Milbanke, Lady Wentworth. Ada translated an article by Italian military engineer Luigi Menabrea, on the Babbage engine, supplementing it with a set of notes, which contain what many consider to be the first computer program, an algorithm designed to be carried out on the engine, if it had ever been built.

5th President of the United States. Born Apr. 28, 1758. Died Jul. 4, 1831 at the age of 73.

Born into slavery, he successfully escaped 3 Sep 1838. He was a Social reformer, author and orator. Leader in US abolitionist movement. Supported women’s rights movement. Became licensed preacher (1839). Publisher and editor, The North Star (1847-1851), later Frederick Douglass’ Paper (1851-1860). Publisher and editor, the New National Era (1870). Nominated for Vice-President by the Equal Rights Party (1872). Appointed President, Freedmen’s Savings Bank (1874). Served as US Ambassador to Haiti (1889-1891). Works include: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845); My Bondage and My Freedom (1855); and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1st ed., 1881, revised, 1892).

Florence Nightingale, (12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing.

Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, in which she organised care for wounded soldiers. She gave nursing a favourable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture, especially in the persona of "The Lady with the Lamp" making rounds of wounded soldiers at night. In 1860, Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London.

Louis Pasteur (December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895) was a French biologist, microbiologist and chemist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization. His discoveries have saved many lives. He reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and created the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax. His medical discoveries provided direct support for the germ theory of disease and its application in clinical medicine. He is best known to the general public for his invention of the technique of treating milk and wine to stop bacterial contamination, a process now called pasteurization.

6th President of the United States. Born Jul. 11, 1767. Died Feb. 23, 1848 at the age of 81.

The Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) was a railway company that operated in north-east England from 1825 to 1863. The world's first public railway to use steam locomotives, its first line connected collieries near Shildon with Stockton-on-Tees and Darlington, and was officially opened on 27 September 1825. While coal wagons were hauled by steam locomotives from the start, passengers were carried in coaches drawn by horses until carriages hauled by steam locomotives were introduced in 1833.

Many of the earliest locomotives for commercial use on American railroads were imported from Great Britain, including first the Stourbridge Lion and later the John Bull. However, a domestic locomotive-manufacturing industry was soon established. In 1830, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Tom Thumb, designed by Peter Cooper, was the first commercial US-built locomotive to run in America.

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (7 March 1765 – 5 July 1833), was a French inventor, usually credited with the invention of photography. Niépce developed heliography, a technique he used to create the world's oldest surviving product of a photographic process: a print made from a photoengraved printing plate in 1825. In 1826 or 1827, he used a primitive camera (Atlas Obscura) to produce the oldest surviving photograph of a real-world scene. Among Niépce's other inventions was the Pyréolophore, one of the world's first internal combustion engines, which he conceived, created, and developed with his older brother Claude Niépce.

7th President of the United States. Born March 15, 1767. Died June 8, 1845 at the age of 78.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter of which has often been called the "Great American Novel".