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Marblehead, Massachusetts

Marblehead is a coastal New England town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, along the North Shore. Its population was 20,441 at the 2020 census. The town lies on a small peninsula that extends into the northern part of Massachusetts Bay. Attached to the town is a near island, known as Marblehead Neck, connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. Marblehead Harbor, protected by shallow shoals and rocks from the open sea, lies between the mainland and the Neck. Beside the Marblehead town center, two other villages lie within the town: the Old Town, which was the original town center, and Clifton, which lies along the border with the neighboring town of Swampscott.

A town with roots in commercial fishing and yachting, Marblehead was a major shipyard and is often referred to as the birthplace of the American Navy, a title sometimes disputed with nearby Beverly. Marblehead was once the fishing capital of Massachusetts. It is also the origin of Marine Corps Aviation. Three US Navy ships have been named USS Marblehead. A center of recreational boating, Marblehead has long been a popular sailing, kayaking and fishing destination, with several yacht clubs established in the late 19th century.

It is home to the Marblehead Light, Fort Sewall, Little Harbor, Mass Audubon's Marblehead Neck Wildlife Sanctuary, Crocker Park, and Devereux Beach. Archibald Willard's famous painting The Spirit of '76 currently resides in Abbot Hall. Much of the Old Town is protected by the Marblehead Historic District.

Marblehead is also home of the Marblehead Men's Softball League, which was established in 1939 and is the oldest and longest standing adult softball league in the world.

Massebequash
Marblehead was originally called Massebequash after the river which ran between it and Salem. The land was inhabited by the Naumkeag tribe of the Pawtucket confederation under the overall sachem Nanepashemet. Epidemics in 1615–1619 and 1633, believed to be smallpox, devastated the tribe. Numerous shell mounds and burial sites have been found throughout the town's history, along with foundations of multiple villages and forts. On September 16, 1684, heirs of Nanepashemet sold their 3700 acre; the deed is preserved today at Abbot Hall in the town.

European settlers and fishing
Marblehead's first European settler was Joseph Doliber or John Peach highly disputed in 1629, who set up on the shore near what is now the end of Bradlee Road. Three years earlier, Isaac Allerton, a Pilgrim from the Mayflower, had arrived in the area and established a fishing village at Marblehead Little Harbor. In May 1635, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay established the town of Marblehead on land that belonged to Salem. Marblehead residents, who never saw eye-to-eye with their more devout and conservative neighbors, were delighted, but less than a year later, the lawmakers reversed themselves. Marblehead finally became independent of Salem in 1649. At times called "Marvell Head", "Marble Harbour" (by Captain John Smith) and "Foy" (by immigrants from Fowey, Cornwall), the town would be named "Marblehead" by settlers who mistook its granite ledges for marble. It began as a fishing village with narrow crooked streets, and developed inland from the harbor. The shoreline smelled of drying fish, typically cod. These were exported abroad and to Salem.

The town had one accused individual during the Salem Witch Trials, Wilmot Redd. She was found guilty of witchcraft and executed by hanging on September 22, 1692.

The town peaked economically just before the American Revolution, as locally financed privateering vessels sought bounty from large European ships. Much early architecture survives from the era, including the Jeremiah Lee Mansion.

Revolutionary War
A large percentage of residents became involved early in the Revolutionary War, and the sailors of Marblehead are generally recognized by scholars as forerunners of the United States Navy. The first vessel commissioned for the army, Hannah, was equipped with cannons, rope, provisions (including the indigenous molasses/sea water cookie known as "Joe Frogger" ), and a crew from Marblehead. With their nautical backgrounds, soldiers from Marblehead under General John Glover were instrumental in the escape of the Continental Army after the Battle of Long Island.The Marblehead militia had become the 14th Continental Regiment of George Washington's army—and one of the few integrated regiments in the entire army. Marblehead men ferried George Washington across the Delaware River for his attack on Trenton. Many who set out for war, however, did not return, leaving the town with 459 widows and 865 orphaned children in a population of less than 5,000.

The community lost a substantial portion of its population and economy, although it was still the tenth-largest inhabited location in the United States at the first census, in 1790.

When George Washington visited the town during his presidential tour of 1789, he knew the sailors of Marblehead well; they had served him honorably in the war. He observed that the town "had the appearance of antiquity."

Fishing industry
In the 75 years from the American Revolution to the middle of the nineteenth century, Marblehead experienced a golden age of fishing. The War of 1812 brought disruption similar to during the American Revolution, with fishing grounds being blockaded, and fisherman heading off to war, with over 500 Marbleheaders being imprisoned by the British. After the war, and later into the 19th century, wealthier citizens wanted a new bank to finance vessels, and to serve the town's fishermen and merchants. On March 17, 1831, with a capital of US$100,000, they founded the Grand Bank. The name was changed to National Grand Bank on October 3, 1864.

The town's fishermen had 98 vessels (95 of which exceeded 50 tons) putting to sea in 1837, where they often harvested fish off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. However, a gale or hurricane in that area on September 19, 1846, sank 11 vessels and damaged others. With 65 men and boys lost in the storm, the town's fishing industry began a decline. The storm is depicted in Fireboard: The Great Gale of 1846, c. 1850 by William Thompson Bartoll. A copy of the book is held by the Peabody Essex Museum.

American Civil War
During the Civil War, 1,048 Marblehead men went to war, joining both the Army and Navy. One hundred ten died; 87 were wounded, many of whom died later of their injuries. During the war, Marblehead would raise almost $100,000 to supplement the war effort, an incredible effort for a town of 8,000 that relied mainly on fishing for income. Marblehead would be the first regiment in the state to answer the call for troops. A Grand Army of the Republic veterans organization was formed after the war, and established headquarters in the old town house, where it still displays artifacts from the Marblehead regiments that served.

Shoemaking, airplanes, and yachting
During the late 19th century, Marblehead had a short-term industrial boom from shoe-making factories. At the same time, the exceptional harbor attracted yachting by wealthy boat owners, and some yacht clubs established centers there. It would become home to the Boston Yacht Club, Corinthian Yacht Club, Eastern Yacht Club, Marblehead Yacht Club, Dolphin Yacht Club, and the oldest junior yacht club in America, the Pleon Yacht Club. This also caused numerous "summer homes" of wealthy Boston residents to be built on Marblehead Neck. The building boom would cause Marblehead Light to be replaced in 1896 with a new iron structure since the light of shorter tower was becoming blocked by the large new homes.

Marblehead was also the site of the Burgess & Curtis Aircraft Factory, where it was the first licensed aircraft manufacturer in the United States. William Starling Burgess designed and flight-tested most of the aircraft that were manufactured at the two plant sites in town. On August 20, 1912, Alfred Austell Cunningham became the first Marine aviator, taking off from Marblehead Harbor in a Burgess Model H seaplane given to him by the Burgess Company. His flight was the start of United States Marine Corps Aviation.

Post-war suburban community
After World War II, the town enjoyed a population boom, developing as a bedroom community for nearby Boston, Lynn, and Salem. This boom ended around 1970, when the town became built out. Marblehead today continues to be a sailing and small-town tourism destination in the summer months.

Town government
The Town of Marblehead has an open town meeting, and is led by a Board of Selectmen. A board of seven selectmen first met on Friday, December 22, 1648.

Town hall
The seat of the first town government used the existing Meeting House on what is now the site of Old Burial Hill. The meeting house served as a place for the town to meet and the main church in town; a dual use that was typical during this time period. The second meeting house was built around 1696 on Franklin Street, which would become known as the "Old Meeting House", also serving the dual use of a town meeting location and church. In 1726, it was decided by the town to construct a separate Town House, which was completed in 1727 (Old Town House). However, the Old Meeting House would continue to occasionally be used for large town meetings, before it was demolished around 1825 after the new First Congregational Church was built (Old North Church). The Town House would serve as the town hall until the construction of Abbot Hall in 1876, where the town clerk and board of selectmen still meet today.

Geography and transportation
Marblehead is comprised by a total of 11.4 sqkm of land and 39.4 sqkm, or 77.61%, of water.

Marblehead is situated on the North Shore of Massachusetts along Massachusetts Bay and Salem Harbor. The town consists of a rocky peninsula that extends into the bay, with an additional neck to the east connected by a long sandbar, now a causeway. This ring of land defines Marblehead's deep, sheltered harbor. Marblehead Neck is home to a bird sanctuary, as well as Castle Rock and Chandler Hovey Park at its northern tip, where Marblehead Light is located. Fountain Park and Fort Sewall are located at the western edge of the mouth of Marblehead Harbor. The town land also includes several small islands in Massachusetts Bay and Dolliber Cove, the area between Peaches Point and Fort Sewall. The town is partially divided from Salem by the Forest River, and is also home to several small ponds. In keeping with the town's location, there are four beaches (one in Dolliber Cove, one in Marblehead Harbor, and two along the southern shore of town), as well as six yacht clubs, one public kayaking center and several boat ramps.

Besides Marblehead Neck, there are two other villages within town, the Old Town to the northeast and Clifton to the southwest. Given its small area, most of the residential land in town is densely settled. Marblehead's town center is located approximately 4 mi from the center of Salem, 16 mi northeast of Boston and 12 mi southwest of Cape Ann. It is bordered by Swampscott to the south and Salem to the northwest. (As Salem's water rights extend into Massachusetts Bay, there is no connection between Marblehead and the city of Beverly across Beverly Harbor.)

Marblehead is home to the eastern termini of Massachusetts Route 114 and Route 129, which both terminate at the intersection of Pleasant Street and Ocean Avenue. Route 114 heads west into Salem, while Route 129 heads south along Atlantic Avenue into Swampscott towards Lynn. There are no freeways within town, with the nearest access being to Massachusetts Route 128 in Peabody and Beverly.

Two MBTA bus routes—the and —originate in town regularly with service to Boston, with weekend service to Wonderland station in Revere. The former Eastern Railroad began service in 1839 and had lines connecting through Swampscott and Salem was discontinued in the late 1950s. The track routes were converted to bike trails and the three train depots were torn down. The Newburyport/Rockport Line of the MBTA Commuter Rail passes through neighboring Swampscott and Salem, with service between the North Shore and Boston's North Station. The nearest air service is located at Beverly Municipal Airport, with the nearest national and international service at Boston's Logan International Airport. Seasonal ferry service to Boston can also be found in Salem.

Climate
According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Marblehead has a humid continental climate or an oceanic climate, abbreviated "Cfb" or "Dfb" on climate maps. The hottest temperature recorded in Marblehead was 101 F on July 23, 2011, while the coldest temperature recorded was -20 F on February 4, 2023.

Demographics
As of the census of 2010, there were 19,808 people, 8,838 households, and 5,467 families residing in the town. The population density was 4,373 pd/sqmi. There were 8,906 housing units at an average density of 1,966.3 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 97.6% White, 0.4% Black or African American, 0.1% Native American, 1.0% Asian, >0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.2% from other races, and 0.7% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.9% of the population.

There were 8,541 households, out of which 31.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 56.5% were married couples living together, 8.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.5% were non-families. Of all households 28.7% were made up of individuals, and 10.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.37 and the average family size was 2.94.

In the town, the population was spread out, with 23.9% under the age of 18, 3.5% from 18 to 24, 28.0% from 25 to 44, 29.0% from 45 to 64, and 15.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 42 years. For every 100 females, there were 89.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 84.3 males.

According to a 2009 estimate, the median income for a household in the town was $97,441, and the median income for a family was $129,968. Males had a median income of $70,470 versus $44,988 for females. The per capita income for the town was $46,738. About 3.2% of families and 4.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 5.7% of those under age 18 and 4.6% of those age 65 or over.

Education
Marblehead Public Schools oversees four schools: Brown and Glover elementary schools; the Village School (grades 4–6); Marblehead Veterans Middle School; and Marblehead High School. The town is also home to the Marblehead Community Charter Public School, the first Commonwealth charter school to open in Massachusetts, as well as Tower School, a private day school for kindergarten through eighth grade.

Town song
The Town of Marblehead has the unique distinction of having an official town anthem "Marblehead Forever". It is performed at most major town events and commemorations. It was written by the Reverend Marcia Martin Selman to the music of the hymn tune "The Lily of the Valley", from a melody by J. R. Murray, "Songs of Rejoicing", 1888.

Points of interest

 * Marblehead Light sunset.jpg
 * Castle Rock Park
 * Crocker Park, the gift of Uriel Crocker
 * Crowninshield (Brown's) Island
 * Gerry Island, an island named after founding father & Marbleheader, Elbridge Gerry
 * The Driftwood
 * Herreshoff Castle
 * The Landing, public town dock on Front Street
 * Marblehead Historic District
 * Marblehead Light, Chandler Hovey Park
 * Marblehead Neck Wildlife Sanctuary
 * Pleon Yacht Club, the oldest junior yacht club in the United States

Historical sites and museums

 * Abbot Hall (1877), containing The Spirit of '76 by Archibald MacNeal Willard, & Maritime Exhibit
 * Fort Sewall (1644)
 * Old Burial Hill (1638)
 * Marblehead Museum
 * Old Town House (1727) & G.A.R. Civil War Museum
 * General John Glover House
 * General Glover Farm
 * Jeremiah Lee Mansion (1768)
 * King Hooper Mansion (1728), now home to the Marblehead Arts Association.
 * Old Powder House (1755)
 * Ambrose Gale House (1663)
 * Simon Bradstreet House (1723)
 * St. Michael's Church (1714)
 * Old North Church (1824)
 * William L. Hammond Park (formally recognized as the birthplace of Marine Corps Aviation, 1977)
 * Gun House (1810)

Yacht clubs
There are six active yacht clubs in town:

Cemeteries & Burial Grounds
Marblehead has multiple historic cemeteries and public and private burial grounds found within the town borders. There have also been Native America burials sites found throughout town.

Politicians and military

 * Nicholson Broughton, first Captain of the American Navy
 * Elbridge Gerry, fifth Vice President of the United States
 * John Glover, Revolutionary War general
 * John Manley, Commodore, American Navy
 * David D. McKiernan, retired United States Army four-star general
 * Seth Moulton, retired Marine Corps officer and a Democratic Congressman
 * Samuel Sewall, Congressman, great uncle to Louisa May Alcott
 * Joseph Story, Supreme Court justice
 * Richard Trefry, 42nd Inspector General United States Army

Athletes

 * Shalane Flanagan, Olympic runner, Beijing Olympics Silver medalist, 2017 New York Marathon winner
 * Sheldon Brown, bicycle mechanic and author of books on cycling
 * Tyler Hamilton, cyclist
 * Kayla Harrison, mixed martial artist, won the 2010 World Championships, gold medals at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics
 * Ted Hood, yachtsman, America's Cup winner
 * Shawn McEachern, Stanley Cup winner
 * Maureen McKinnon-Tucker, Gold Medalist Sailing 2008 Summer Paralympics
 * Jake Phelps, skateboarder – editor-in-chief Thrasher Magazine
 * Cory Schneider, New Jersey Devils goaltender

Architects and yacht designers

 * William Starling Burgess, yacht designer and aircraft manufacturer
 * L. Francis Herreshoff, yacht designer

Businessmen and entrepreneurs, philanthropist

 * James J.H. Gregory, philanthropist, started Marblehead libraries, horticulturalist "seed king", historian, poet.
 * Uriel Crocker, publisher, businessman
 * Joseph Dixon: inventor who pioneered in the industrial use of graphite, leading to Dixon Ticonderoga pencils
 * Peter Lynch, investor, author
 * Michael Smith, American diplomat and trade negotiator

Writers and journalists

 * Ashley Bowen, first American sailor to write an autobiography
 * Susan Estrich, lawyer, professor, author, political operative
 * Julia Glass, novelist
 * Katherine Howe, novelist
 * Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture critic, lived in Marblehead seasonally for over 30 years
 * Martha Hooper Blackler Kalopothakes (1830–1871), missionary, journalist, translator
 * Ruth Edna Kelley, author
 * Harry Kemelman, novelist
 * Edward A. Lawrence, Jr. (1847-1893), Protestant pastor, author; namesake of Lawrence House in Baltimore
 * Caroline Atherton Mason, poet
 * Grace A. Oliver, author
 * Eugene O'Neill, playwright and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1936
 * Rhod Sharp, news journalist, broadcaster, BBC – "Up All Night"
 * Amy Siskind, activist and author
 * Tasha Tudor, Caldecott honored children's author and illustrator, daughter of William Starling Burgess, great-granddaughter of Frederic Tudor

Arts and entertainment

 * Amelia Peabody, sculptor, breeder and philanthropist
 * Keith Ablow, former psychiatrist, writer, host and pundit
 * Frank Black, musician and member of the alternative rock band Pixies
 * Rob Delaney, comedian and "funniest person on Twitter"
 * Loyd Grossman, UK television host
 * Dave Mattacks, English-born rock and folk drummer and session musician; former member of Fairport Convention and guest percussionist for Jethro Tull
 * Pete Muller, National Geographic photographer
 * Estelle Parsons, actress, Academy Award winner for Actress in a Supporting Role – Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
 * Rhod Sharp, BBC Radio presenter of Up All Night
 * Jamie Walters, actor, musician and star of 90210

Politicians and royalty

 * President George Washington: 1789, George Washington part of his ten-day presidential visit to Massachusetts
 * Marquis de Lafayette: 1784, after Revolutionary War was over, Marquis de Lafayette visited to honor General John Glover and to see his friend Elbridge Gerry. He returned in 1824 to Marblehead during his triumphal tour of the United States.
 * President Andrew Jackson: 1830s (rumored)
 * President Chester Arthur: 1882, U.S. steamer anchored off Marblehead, was "kidnapped" after returning from Salem and brought to Abbott Hall where he was welcomed by Marbleheaders and gave short speech.
 * President Coolidge: 1925, visits Marblehead Harbor aboard the presidential yacht "USS Mayflower"
 * President Franklin Roosevelt: 1933, for sailing trip in Marblehead
 * Prince Olav of Norway: 1939 went sailing in Marblehead while touring United States
 * Senator John F. Kennedy: visited "Spirit of 76" painting with wife Jacqueline.
 * Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet leader

Celebrities

 * Lucille Ball: 1947, arrived at Seaside park via helicopter to perform in summer theater series.
 * Vivian Vance: performed in Marblehead Summer theater series.
 * Marjorie Merriweather Post: visited throughout 1930s and after the war, anchoring yacht Sea Cloud off Marblehead Light.
 * Walter Cronkite: 1997, for USS Constitution's 200th anniversary
 * Tallulah Bankhead
 * Billie Burke: Actress, best known as Glinda in The Wizard of Oz, performed in the 1955 Marblehead Summer Theatre Series
 * Gloria Vanderbilt: Actress, performed at Marblehead High School Auditorium, summer theatre series
 * Eva Gabor: Actress, performed in summer theatre series
 * Charles Coburn: Actor, performed in summer theatre series
 * Ethel Waters: American blues singer, "Stormy Weather", performed in Marblehead in 1955
 * Sarah Churchill: Actress, Winston Churchill's daughter, performed in summer series

Writers

 * H. P. Lovecraft visited Marblehead in 1922, an event which had profound personal effect on him. He used Marblehead as his inspiration for the fictional town of Kingsport.
 * Sylvia Plath American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Visited Marblehead in July 1951.

See: Arts, Films section for actors who came for location shooting.

Paintings
Notable paintings & artists depicting Marblehead scenes and figures:

 * William Thompson Bartoll
 * The Great Gale of 1846, oil on wood fireboard, 1850, Peabody Essex Museum
 * Alfred Thompson Bricher:
 * Castle Rock, Marblehead, 1878, Smithsonian American Art Museum
 * John Singleton Copley
 * Jeremiah Lee, oil portrait, 1769, The Wadsworth Atheneum
 * Mrs Jeremiah Lee, Martha Swett, oil portrait, 1769, The Wadsworth Atheneum
 * Clement Drew
 * Yachts Off Halfway Rock Marblehead, oil on board, 1884.
 * J.O.J. Frost
 * Waterfront of Old Town, paint on masonite, 1924, Marblehead Historical Society
 * The March into Boston from Marblehead...April 16, 1861, oil on fiberboard, 1925, Peabody Essex Museum
 * The Marblehead Fishermen, oil on board, c. 1922–1928, Smithsonian American Art Museum
 * James Jeffrey Grant
 * From the Hilltop, Marblehead, Mass
 * Marblehead, c. 1920
 * Frederick Childe Hassam
 * Panorama of Marblehead, Marblehead Messenger, illustration, 1880
 * M.H. Howes
 * First International Yacht Race off Children's Island, oil on canvas, 1905
 * John Ross Key
 * On the Coast near Marblehead
 * Marblehead, Mass, Peabody Essex Museum
 * Fitz Henry Lane
 * Becalmed Off Halfway Rock, oil on canvas, 1860, Cape Ann Museum
 * Halfway Rock off Marblehead, oil on canvas, Cape Ann Museum
 * Orlando Rouland
 * Looking Over Old Marblehead, 1928, oil on Canvas
 * Moonlight on Washington Square, oil on canvas
 * Marblehead Common at night, oil on canvas
 * Old Town Rooftops, oil on canvas
 * Maurice Brazil Prendergast:
 * Marblehead, watercolor 1914. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
 * Bathing, Marblehead, 1897, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
 * Moonlight at Marblehead, c. 1907–1910
 * Marblehead Harbor, c. 1918–1920, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia
 * Peaches Point, oil on canvas, c. 1915, Bowdoin College Museum of Art
 * Arthur Quartley
 * Morning off Marblehead, oil on canvas, 1879
 * John Singer Sargent
 * On deck of the Yacht Constellation, water color, 1924, Peabody Essex Museum
 * Rainy day on the deck of the yacht Constellation, water color, 1924
 * James David Smillie
 * At Marblehead Neck, etching, 1883, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
 * Causeway - Marblehead Neck, etching, 1883
 * William R. Stone
 * Low Tide, Marblehead, Massachusetts,(Doliber's Cove) Oil on canvas, 1889
 * Mary Bradish Titcomb
 * Marblehead Harbor, oil on canvas
 * Sunday Morning, oil on canvas, 1920
 * House in Poplars, Marblehead Mass, gouche on board
 * Rockaway Street, watercolor, 1906
 * View of Marblehead, oil on canvas
 * Sedona Hill, Marblehead, oil on canvas
 * Stanley Wingate Woodward
 * The Old Spite House, Etching, c. 1940, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Films
Movies filmed in Marblehead include:

 * The Pride of the Clan starring Mary Pickford (1917) – Castle Rock (park transformed into Scottish village)
 * Home Before Dark (1958) – "Lafayette House" (used as primary home for filming)
 * Coma (1978)
 * The Witches of Eastwick (1986) – Abbott Hall (used for concert scene and reveal of Jack Nicholson's character)
 * The Good Son (1993)
 * Hocus Pocus (1993) – Old town streets (bike ride scene), Old Burial Hill (daytime cemetery), Crocker Park (Abbott Hall bells ringing), Witches night time flyover
 * Autumn Heart (2000)
 * Treading Water (2001)
 * What's the Worst That Could Happen? (2001)was filmed in Manchester-by-the-Sea, but scenes are set in Marblehead.
 * Moonlight Mile (2002)
 * Grown Ups (2010)
 * The Company Men (2010)
 * Grown Ups 2 (2012)
 * Hubie Halloween (2019)
 * Godmothered (2020)

Television
A television show has yet to been filmed in the town, but Marblehead has been mentioned in the following TV series:
 * Marblehead Manor (1987) was a sitcom about a wealthy Marblehead resident that ran for one season on CBS.
 * Cheers, set in Boston, made three references to the town. Sam mentions sailing to Marblehead in Season 1, Episode 6. Diane mentions Sam having taken her to a bed and breakfast in Marblehead in Season 4, episode 15. Sam says that he will sail to Marblehead for relaxation in Season 5, Episode 1.
 * In Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Aunt Hilda makes reference to Marblehead in the sixth episode of the second season, entitled "Sabrina, the Teenage Boy."
 * The TV movie The Crossing (2000) has General Washington (Jeff Daniels) speaking to Col. Glover (Sebastian Roché) about the men of Marblehead rowing across the Delaware.
 * The West Wing Season 4 episode 18, "Privateers", has Mrs. Marion Cotesworth-Haye of Marblehead denouncing the first lady's (Stockard Channing) membership of the Daughters of the Revolution, when they learn that her distant relative was more pirate than patriot.
 * The Handmaid's Tale mentions Marblehead in season one episode 7, entitled "The Other Side".

Set in Marblehead, or based on local figures

 * Marblehead', by Joan Thompson: The town appears in the eponymous book debuting in 1978.
 * The Hearth & Eagle, by Anya Seton, traces the history of Marblehead from early settlement in 1630 to modern times through the story of one family, originally from Cornwall, who eventually ran Marblehead's Hearth & Eagle Inn.
 * Agnes Surriage, by Edwin Lassetter Bynner
 * The Fountain Inn, by Nathan P. Sanborn
 * The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, by Ben Sherwood, is set in Marblehead and features the Waterside Cemetery. A film adaptation was made in 2010.
 * General John Glover and His Marblehead Mariners, by George Athan Billias (1960)
 * The Wizard of Orne Hill and Other Tales of Old Marblehead, by Dorothy Miles
 * At the Point of Cutlass, by Gregory Flemming, tells the story of Marblehead's "Robinson Curusoe" Philip Ashton and is based on his memoirs
 * Hidden Silver, by Georgene Faulkner, Relates the story of a Marblehead family during the American Revolution
 * 'Azor of Marblehead Series (1948–1960), by Maude Cowley
 * Azor
 * Azor and the Haddock
 * Azor and the Blue-eyed Cow
 * Tor and Azor
 * Pringle and the Lavender Goat
 * Swansday at Redd's, A Marblehead Story, by Ray Cole
 * Remembering James J. H. Gregory: The Seed King, Philanthropist, Man, by Shari Kelley Worrell
 * Marblehead from HollyHocks to Hot Top, articles by John D Hill, Morrill S. Reynolds, Phyllis Masters, Percy L. Martin
 * Ashton's Memorial: An History of the Strange Adventures of Philip Ashton, Jr. (1725)
 * Marblehead's First Harbor: The Rich History of a Small Fishing Port, by Hugh Peabody Bishop and Brenda Bishop Booma
 * The Lace Reader, by Brunonia Barry
 * A Guide to Marblehead, by Samuel Roads Jr. (1881)
 * Old Marblehead, by Samuel Chamberlain (1940)
 * Peaches Point: The Summer World Of T.H. Shepard, By Timothy Shepard (1976)
 * History and Traditions of Marblehead, by Samuel Roads Jr. (1880)
 * In the Time of Worms: An Ancient Tale of Marblehead, by Kenelm Winslow Harris
 * Under the Golden Cod, by 350th Anniversary book Committee detailing the history of the congregation of Marblehead Old North Church from 1635 to 1985.
 * Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling mentions the town
 * The Autobiography of Ashley Bowen (1728–1813), by Ashley Bowen
 * Red On Black, A Marblehead Story, by Eben Weed
 * Where Away: The Story of USS Marblehead, by George Sessions Perry and Mabel Leighton
 * 'Ten Hours Until Dawn, by Michael J. Tougias
 * Marblehead: The Spirit of '76 Lives Here, by Priscilla Sawyer Lord (1972)

Literature influenced by Marblehead

 * Rabbi Small, by Harry Kemelman, takes place in the fictional town of Barnard's Crossing, a place based on Marblehead. Kemelman lived in Marblehead for 50 years.
 * The Jesse Stone novels: Robert B. Parker supposedly based the fictional town of Paradise, in which the novels take place, on Marblehead. Both Paradise and Marblehead are on the coast in Essex County, Cape Ann is visible from them, and each has an annual Race Week yachting event.
 * Kingsport – Horror and fantasy writer H. P. Lovecraft derived great inspiration from Marblehead. Following his first visit in December 1922, he retroactively reconfigured his fictional Kingsport in its own image. As of 1920, Kingsport was an unspecified location on Rhode Island, only mentioned in passing. Lovecraft likely based the name on that of Kingstown, R.I. Lovecraft regarded his experience of visiting Marblehead in 1922, however, as life-changing. Thereafter, he based his Kingsport on Marblehead.

Voting history
At the presidential level, Marblehead leaned towards the Republican candidate in results tabulated from 1968 through 1988, but has since swung predominantly to the Democratic Party, as with many other communities in Massachusetts.

title: Marblehead, Massachusetts


text:
Baron Baltimore

Baron Baltimore, of Baltimore, County Longford, was a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1625 and ended in 1771, upon the death of its sixth-generation male heir, aged 40. Holders of the title were usually known as Lord Baltimore for short.

History
The title was granted in 1625 to Sir George Calvert, and it became extinct in 1771 on the death of Frederick, 6th Baron Baltimore. The title was held by six members/generations of the Calvert family, who were proprietors of the palatinates Avalon in Newfoundland and Maryland Palatinate (later the Province of Maryland and American State of Maryland).

A reference to "Lord Baltimore" is to any one of the six barons and most frequently in U.S. history to Cecil, 2nd Baron Baltimore, after whom the city of Baltimore, Maryland was named, which took place in his lifetime due to his family's holdings. His father had supported colonization of the territory, and his younger brother, Leonard, was the first Governor of Maryland.

Barons Baltimore (1625–1771)

 * Sir George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (1579–1632)
 * Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (1605–1675)
 * Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore (1637–1715)
 * Benedict Leonard Calvert, 4th Baron Baltimore (1679–1715)
 * Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore (1699–1751)
 * Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore (1731–1771)

Political power
As holders of an Irish peerage, the Lords Baltimore had a seat, if they wished to take it up, in the medieval-founded Irish House of Lords, which was abolished in 1801 when the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland came into being. Irish peerages were usually awarded to major landowners likely to support the status quo in Ireland, others involved in the various economic, social, and military campaigns in Ireland, such as the Plantations of Ireland, and finally also as a way of giving people in Great Britain the honour of a peerage which did not also grant a seat in the English, later British, House of Lords, thereby excluding them from sitting in the House of Commons at Westminster. Irish peers ranged between people owning little or no property in Ireland to those having their main homes and large estates there.

Family seats and abodes

In the British Isles, the family's main home was a landscaped mansion and estate ("park") in the Home Counties. In 1705, the 4th Baron sold to the Crown a house and gardens (owned by virtue of his wife) known as Woodstock Park, which was promptly demolished and replaced by Blenheim Palace, a site regally granted to the victorious Duke of Marlborough as a gift. It swiftly became the only private mansion termed a palace in England; however, this loss was partially recouped when the 4th Baron inherited an additional manor house and farm in Epsom, Surrey, on the death of his distant cousin Lady Ann(s) Lewknor (née Mynne), his father having already owned, since 1692, from the death of Elizabeth Evelyn (née Mynne), a mid-17th century-built neighbouring fine house known as Woodcote Park. Its ownership in the family passed down to the heirs of the 6th Baron. His latter-day home in London itself was on Russell Square:

"the handsome mansion on the south-east side of the square, at the corner of Guilford Street, was built, in 1759, for the eccentric and profligate Lord Baltimore ... it was at first called Baltimore House. Hither his lordship decoyed a young milliner, Sarah Woodcock, and was prosecuted for having caused her ruin, but acquitted. He died in 1771 at Naples, whence his remains were brought to London, and lay in state, as we have mentioned, at Exeter Change ... The house was subsequently occupied by the equally eccentric Duke of Bolton."

Other notable Calverts
The Lords Baltimore had notable early siblings and descendants: 17th century 18th century Early 19th century Mid 19th century
 * Leonard Calvert (1606–1647), the first Governor of the Province of Maryland. He was the second/younger son of The 1st Baron Baltimore (1579–1632), to which the colony and province of Maryland were originally granted by King Charles I of England in 1632, and with the first Baron's eldest son and heir Cecilius, 2nd Baron Baltimore (1605–1675), to which the Maryland grant was extended, and who continued and planned to send the first group of settlers supervised by younger brother Leonard, on the ships The Ark and The Dove across the North Atlantic Ocean in late 1633 and early 1634.
 * Phillip Calvert (1626–1682), proprietary/colonial fifth Governor of Maryland from 1660 to 1682. He was appointed by the royally chartered proprietor of the Province of Maryland, The 3rd Baron Baltimore, as a caretaker to replace insurgent leader Josias Fendall (1628–1687), who had assumed the governorship.
 * Charles Calvert (1680–1734), provincial/colonial fourteenth (14th) Governor of Maryland in 1720, at a time when the Calvert family had recently regained control of their proprietary colony. He was appointed Governor by his cousin, The 5th Baron Baltimore.
 * Benedict Leonard Calvert (1700–1732), the proprietary/colonial fifteenth (15th) Governor of Maryland from 1727 through 1731, appointed by his brother, The 5th Baron Baltimore.
 * Benedict Swingate Calvert (c. 1730–1788), the illegitimate son of The 5th Baron Baltimore, (the third Proprietor/Colonial Governor of Maryland). He was a Loyalist and Judge of the Land Office prior to the American Revolution (1775–1783).
 * Eleanor Calvert (1758–1811), daughter-in-law of Martha Dandridge Washington and the stepdaughter-in-law of the General of the Continental Army and first President of the United States, George Washington (1732–1799).
 * Henry Harford (1758–1834), 5th and last Proprietor of Maryland (1771–1776). He was the illegitimate son of The 6th Baron Baltimore, the last holder of the family peerage. Harford County, Maryland, split off and formed to the northeast from part of Baltimore County in 1774, is named for him.
 * Rosalie Stier Calvert (1778–1821), Riversdale plantation owner with her husband George.
 * George Henry Calvert (1803–1889), essayist, dramatist, poet, and biographer.
 * Charles Benedict Calvert (1808–1864), a U.S. Representative (Congressman) from the Sixth Congressional District of Maryland (western panhandle of state), serving one term from 1861 to 1863, and also the founder of the Maryland Agricultural College near College Park, Maryland, in 1856 (now the University of Maryland at College Park, after 1920) and his nearby "Riversdale" plantation estate and extant mansion in Prince George's County, off U.S. Route 1 (Washington Boulevard).

Legacy
There are many locations in Maryland named after the Barons Baltimore ("Lords Baltimore"), including Baltimore County, Baltimore City, Calvert County, Cecil County, Charles County, Frederick County, Leonardtown, St. Leonard, and Calvert Cliffs. There are also Charles Street and Calvert Street in Baltimore.

The wife of The 2nd Baron Baltimore, Anne Arundell's namesake Queen survives in that of Anne Arundel County, Maryland. His name survives also in that of Cecil County, Maryland, Cecil Avenue, Cecil Elementary School and Calvert Street in Baltimore, along with another Calvert Street (alley) in Brooklyn (a South Baltimore city neighbourhood bordering suburban Anne Arundel County) and Calvert Street in Washington, D.C.

Harford County is named for Henry Harford (1758/1760–1835), the illegitimate son of Frederick, 6th and last Baron Baltimore (1731–1771). Leonardtown, Maryland, now county seat of St. Mary's, is named for the younger brother of the Cecil, 2nd Lord Baltimore, the 28-year-old Leonard Calvert (1606–1647), who arrived in the Colonial settling expedition of 1634 and set up the provincial government in the new capital of St. Mary's City.

The main downtown street in Cumberland, Maryland, is named Baltimore Street, along with Baltimore Avenue, the main north–south highway of commercial business along the Atlantic coast to the resort town of Ocean City. The Baltimore Road, which runs through the town of Bladensburg was made famous due to its role in the Battle of Bladensburg and the subsequent "Burning of Washington" during the War of 1812.

On the Avalon Peninsula in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador of the northeastern Dominion of Canada, there is a settlement named Calvert, and in nearby Ferryland there is a "Baltimore School". There are also several other towns and villages across North America in the several states with the name of "Baltimore", "New Baltimore" or "Old Baltimore".

A life-sized bronze statue on a granite pedestal of Cecil, 2nd Lord Baltimore (1605–1675), is located on the steps of the western end at the St. Paul Street entrance of the Baltimore City Circuit Court House, the third courts structure on the nearby colonial-era Courthouse Square site (located to the east along North Calvert Street), constructed 1896–1900 (now renamed the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse since 1985 for a noted local and Civil Rights Movement leader, Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. [1911–1984], known as "The 101st Senator") in Baltimore, Maryland. The statue of Cecil, Lord Baltimore, sponsored by the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Maryland, was dedicated November 21, 1908, and now faces a fountain and tree-shaded small plaza/park across the street, developed/laid out in 1964, between East Fayette and East Lexington Streets.

Before the American Revolution, a common flag used by military units of the colonial militia of the Province of Maryland was known as the Calvert Arms Flag. This flag had the original Union Jack from the Acts of Union 1707 as a canton in the upper corner, with a St. George's Cross and a St. Andrew's Cross to represent the patron saint of England and Scotland, respectively.

This Union Jack canton is in the upper corner of the banner over the black and gold (yellow) chevrons depicted on the Calvert family's shield and coats-of-arms. Today, this historical colonial/provincial flag is often displayed throughout the state, especially at historical, heritage and festival events such as for the French and Indian War era, (1754–1763) at colonial Fort Frederick in Washington County in the mountainous western panhandle of the state.

The modern flag of the State of Maryland still bears the Calvert-Crossland family / Lord Baltimore coats-of-arms and shield, and has been used since the 1880s with the four quarters reunited after the tragic splits in the border states of the American Civil War, with the Northern Union Army regiments using the black and gold chevrons and the Southern Confederate States Army units using the red/white trefoil cross botonee.

Notes and citations

 * Citations

 * Notes

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Baron Baltimore


text:
Polish people

Polish people, or Poles, are a West Slavic ethnic group and nation  who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in Central Europe. The preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland defines the Polish nation as comprising all the citizens of Poland, regardless of heritage or ethnicity. The majority of Poles adhere to Roman Catholicism.

The population of self-declared Poles in Poland is estimated at 37,394,000 out of an overall population of 38,512,000 (based on the 2011 census), of whom 36,522,000 declared Polish alone. A wide-ranging Polish diaspora (the Polonia) exists throughout Eurasia, the Americas, and Australasia. Today, the largest urban concentrations of Poles are within the Warsaw metropolitan area and the Katowice urban area.

Ethnic Poles are considered to be the descendants of the ancient West Slavic Lechites and other tribes that inhabited the Polish territories during the late antiquity period. Poland's recorded history dates back over a thousand years to c. 930–960 AD, when the Western Polans – an influential tribe in the Greater Poland region – united various Lechitic clans under what became the Piast dynasty, thus creating the first Polish state. The subsequent Christianization of Poland by the Catholic Church, in 966 CE, marked Poland's advent to the community of Western Christendom. However, throughout its existence, the Polish state followed a tolerant policy towards minorities resulting in numerous ethnic and religious identities of the Poles, such as Polish Jews.

Exonyms
The Polish endonym Polacy is derived from the Western Polans, a Lechitic tribe which inhabited lands around the River Warta in Greater Poland region from the mid-6th century onward. The tribe's name stems from the Proto-Indo European *pleh₂-, which means flat or flatland and corresponds to the topography of a region that the Western Polans initially settled. The prefix pol- is used in most world languages when referring to Poles (Spanish polaco, Italian polacche, French polonais, German Pole).

Among other foreign exonyms for the Polish people are Lithuanian Lenkai; Hungarian Lengyelek; Turkish Leh; Լեհաստան Lehastan; and (Lahestān). These stem from Lechia, the ancient name for Poland, or from the tribal Lendians. Their names are equally derived from the Old Polish term lęda, meaning plain or field.

Ethnogenesis

Slavs have been in the territory of modern-day Poland for over 1500 years. During the Migration Period, central Europe was becoming increasingly settled by the early Slavs (500–700 AD). They organized into tribal units, of which the larger ones further west were later known as the Polish tribes (Lechites); the names of many tribes are found on the list compiled by the anonymous Bavarian Geographer in the 9th century. In the 9th and 10th centuries the tribes gave rise to developed regions along the upper Vistula (the Vistulans), the Baltic Sea coast and in Greater Poland. The ultimate tribal undertaking (10th century) resulted in a lasting political structure and the creation of a Polish state.

Language

Polish is the native language of most Poles. It is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group and the sole official language in the Republic of Poland. Its written form uses the Polish alphabet, which is the basic Latin alphabet with the addition of six diacritic marks, totalling 32 letters. Bearing relation to Czech and Slovak, it has been profoundly influenced by Latin, German and other languages over the course of history. Poland is linguistically homogeneous – nearly 97% of Poland's citizens declare Polish as their mother tongue.

Polish-speakers use the language in a uniform manner throughout most of Poland, though numerous dialects and a vernacular language in certain regions coexist alongside standard Polish. The most common lects in Poland are Silesian, spoken in Upper Silesia, and Kashubian, widely spoken in historic Eastern Pomerania (Pomerelia), today in the northwestern part of Poland. Kashubian possesses its own status as a separate language. The Goral people in the mountainous south use their own nonstandard dialect, accenting and different intonation.

The geographical distribution of the Polish language was greatly affected by the border changes and population transfers that followed the Second World War – forced expulsions and resettlement during that period contributed to the country's current linguistic homogeneity.

Culture

The culture of Poland is closely connected with its intricate 1,000-year history, and forms an important constituent in the Western civilisation. Strong ties with the Latinate world and the Roman Catholic faith also shaped Poland's cultural identity.

Officially, the national and state symbol is the white-tailed eagle (bielik) embedded on the Coat of arms of Poland (godło). The national colours are white and red, which appropriately appear on the flag of Poland (flaga), banners, cockades and memorabilia.

Personal achievement and education plays an important role in Polish society today. In 2018, the Programme for International Student Assessment ranked Poland 11th in the world for mathematics, science and reading. Education has been of prime interest to Poland since the early 12th century, particularly for its noble classes. In 1364, King Casimir the Great founded the Kraków Academy, which would become Jagiellonian University, the second-oldest institution of higher learning in Central Europe. People of Polish birth have made considerable contributions in the fields of science, technology and mathematics both in Poland and abroad, among them Vitello, Nicolaus Copernicus, Marie Skłodowska–Curie, Rudolf Modrzejewski, Rudolf Weigl, Bronisław Malinowski, Stefan Banach, Stanisław Ulam, Leonid Hurwicz, Benoit Mandelbrot and Alfred Tarski.

Poland's folk music, especially the mazurka, krakowiak and polonaise, were popularized by Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, and they soon spread across Europe and elsewhere. Latin songs and religious hymns such as Gaude Mater Polonia and Bogurodzica were once chanted in churches and during patriotic festivities, but the tradition has faded.

According to a 2020 study, Poland ranks 12th globally on a list of countries which read the most, and approximately 79% of Poles read the news more than once a day, placing it 2nd behind Sweden. As of 2021, six Poles received the Nobel Prize in Literature. The national epic is Pan Tadeusz (English: Master Thaddeus), written by Adam Mickiewicz. Renowned novelists who gained much recognition abroad include Joseph Conrad (wrote in English; Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim), Stanisław Lem (science-fiction; Solaris) and Andrzej Sapkowski (fantasy; The Witcher).

Various regions in Poland such as Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Mazovia, Silesia, and Pomerania developed their own distinct cultures, cuisines, folk costumes and dialects. Also, Poland for centuries was a refuge to many Jews and to Armenians, who became an important part of Polish society and similarly developed their own unique cultures.

Popular everyday foods in Poland include pork cutlets (kotlet schabowy), schnitzels, kielbasa sausage, potatoes, coleslaw and salads, soups (barszcz, tomato or meat broth), pierogi dumplings, and bread rolls. Traditional Polish cuisine is hearty and Poles are one of the more obese nations in Europe – approximately 58% of the adult population was overweight in 2019, above the EU average. According to data from 2017, meat consumption per capita in Poland was one of the highest in the world, with pork being the most in demand. Alcohol consumption is relatively moderate compared to other European states; popular alcoholic beverages include Polish-produced beer, vodka and ciders.

Religion

Poles have traditionally adhered to the Christian faith; an overwhelming majority belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, with 87.5% of Poles in 2011 identifying as Roman Catholic. According to Poland's Constitution, freedom of religion is ensured to everyone. It also allows for national and ethnic minorities to have the right to establish educational and cultural institutions, institutions designed to protect religious identity, as well as to participate in the resolution of matters connected with their cultural identity.

There are smaller communities primarily comprising Protestants (especially Lutherans), Orthodox Christians (migrants), Jehovah's Witnesses, those irreligious, and Judaism (mostly from the Jewish populations in Poland who have lived in Poland prior to World War II) and Sunni Muslims (Polish Tatars). Roman Catholics live all over the country, while Orthodox Christians can be found mostly in the far north-eastern corner, in the area of Białystok, and Protestants in Cieszyn Silesia and Warmia-Masuria regions. A growing Jewish population exists in major cities, especially in Warsaw, Kraków and Wrocław. Over two million Jews of Polish origin reside in the United States, Brazil, and Israel.

Religious organizations in the Republic of Poland can register their institution with the Ministry of Interior and Administration creating a record of churches and other religious organizations who operate under separate Polish laws. This registration is not necessary; however, it is beneficial when it comes to serving the freedom of religious practice laws.

Slavic Native Faith (Rodzimowiercy) groups, registered with the Polish authorities in 1995, are the Native Polish Church (Rodzimy Kościół Polski), which represents a pagan tradition going back to Władysław Kołodziej's 1921 Holy Circle of Worshippers of Światowid (Święte Koło Czcicieli Światowida), and the Polish Slavic Church (Polski Kościół Słowiański). There is also the Native Faith Association (Zrzeszenie Rodzimej Wiary, ZRW), founded in 1996.

Geographic distribution
Polish people are the sixth-largest national group in the European Union (EU). Estimates vary depending on source, though available data suggest a total number of around 60 million people worldwide (with roughly 18-20 million living outside of Poland, many of whom are not of Polish descent, but are Polish nationals). There are almost 38 million Poles in Poland alone. There are also strong Polish communities in neighbouring countries, whose territories were once occupied or part of Poland – Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, western Ukraine, and western Belarus.

The term "Polonia" is usually used in Poland to refer to people of Polish origin who live outside Polish borders. There is a notable Polish diaspora in the United States, Brazil, and Canada. France has a historic relationship with Poland and has a relatively large Polish-descendant population. Poles have lived in France since the 18th century. In the early 20th century, over a million Polish people settled in France, mostly during world wars, among them Polish émigrés fleeing either Nazi occupation (1939–1945) or Communism (1945/1947–1989).

In the United States, a significant number of Polish immigrants settled in Chicago (billed as the world's most Polish city outside of Poland), Milwaukee, Ohio, Detroit, New Jersey, New York City, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and New England. The highest concentration of Polish Americans in a single New England municipality is in New Britain, Connecticut. The majority of Polish Canadians have arrived in Canada since World War II. The number of Polish immigrants increased between 1945 and 1970, and again after the end of Communism in Poland in 1989. In Brazil, the majority of Polish immigrants settled in Paraná State. Smaller, but significant numbers settled in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Espírito Santo and São Paulo (state). The city of Curitiba has the second largest Polish diaspora in the world (after Chicago) and Polish music, dishes and culture are quite common in the region.

A recent large migration of Poles took place following Poland's accession to the European Union in 2004 and with the opening of the EU's labor market; an approximate number of 2 million, primarily young, Poles taking up jobs abroad. It is estimated that over half a million Polish people went to work in the United Kingdom from Poland. Since 2011, Poles have been able to work freely throughout the EU where they have had full working rights since Poland's EU accession in 2004. The Polish community in Norway has increased substantially and has grown to a total number of 120,000, making Poles the largest immigrant group in Norway. Only in recent years has the population abroad decreased, specifically in the UK with 116.000 leaving the UK in 2018 alone. There is a large minority of Polish people in Ireland that makes up approximately 2.57% of the population.

title: Polish people


text:
Matter of Britain

The Matter of Britain (matière de Bretagne) is the body of medieval literature and legendary material associated with Great Britain and Brittany and the legendary kings and heroes associated with it, particularly King Arthur. The 12th-century Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), widely popular in its day, is a central component of the Matter of Britain.

It was one of the three great Western story cycles recalled repeatedly in medieval literature, together with the Matter of France, which concerned the legends of Charlemagne, and the Matter of Rome, which included material derived from or inspired by classical mythology and classical history. Its pseudo-chronicle and chivalric romance works, written both in prose and verse, flourished from the 12th to the 16th century.

Name
The three "matters" were first described in the 12th century by French poet Jean Bodel, whose epic Chanson des Saisnes ("Song of the Saxons") contains the lines:

The name distinguishes and relates the Matter of Britain from the mythological themes taken from classical antiquity, the "Matter of Rome", and the tales of the Paladins of Charlemagne and their wars with the Moors and Saracens, which constituted the "Matter of France".

Themes and subjects
King Arthur is the chief subject of the Matter of Britain, along with stories related to the legendary kings of Britain, as well as lesser-known topics related to the history of Great Britain and Brittany, such as the stories of Brutus of Troy, Coel Hen, Leir of Britain (King Lear), and Gogmagog.

Legendary history
The legendary history of Britain was created partly to form a body of patriotic myth for the country. Several agendas thus can be seen in this body of literature. According to John J. Davenport, the question of Britain's identity and significance in the world "was a theme of special importance for writers trying to find unity in the mixture of their land's Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Roman and Norse inheritance."

Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae is a central component of the Matter of Britain. Geoffrey drew on a number of ancient British texts, including the ninth century Historia Brittonum. The Historia Brittonum is the earliest known source of the story of Brutus of Troy. Traditionally attributed to Nennius, its actual compiler is unknown; it exists in several recensions. This tale went on to achieve greater currency because its inventor linked Brutus to the diaspora of heroes that followed the Trojan War. As such, this material could be used for patriotic myth-making just as Virgil linked the founding of Rome to the Trojan War in The Æneid. Geoffrey lists Coel Hen as a King of the Britons, whose daughter, Helena marries Constantius Chlorus and gives birth to a son who becomes the Emperor Constantine the Great, tracing the Roman imperial line to British ancestors.

It has been suggested that Leir of Britain, who later became King Lear, was originally the Welsh sea-god Llŷr, related to the Irish Ler. Various Celtic deities have been identified with characters from Arthurian literature as well: for example Morgan le Fay was often thought to have originally been the Welsh goddess Modron or Irish the Morrígan. Many of these identifications come from the speculative comparative religion of the late 19th century and have been questioned in more recent years.

William Shakespeare was interested in the legendary history of Britain, and was familiar with some of its more obscure byways. Shakespeare's plays contain several tales relating to these legendary kings, such as King Lear and Cymbeline. It has been suggested that Shakespeare's Welsh schoolmaster Thomas Jenkins introduced him to this material. These tales also figure in Raphael Holinshed's The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which also appears in Shakespeare's sources for Macbeth.

Other early authors also drew from the early Arthurian and pseudo-historical sources of the Matter of Britain. The Scots, for instance, formulated a mythical history in the Pictish and the Dál Riata royal lines. While they do eventually become factual lines, unlike those of Geoffrey, their origins are vague and often incorporate both aspects of mythical British history and mythical Irish history. The story of Gabrán mac Domangairt especially incorporates elements of both those histories.

Arthurian cycle
The Arthurian literary cycle is the best-known part of the Matter of Britain. It has succeeded largely because it tells two interlocking stories that have intrigued many later authors. One concerns Camelot, usually envisioned as a doomed utopia of chivalric virtue, undone by the fatal flaws of the heroes like Arthur, Gawain and Lancelot. The other concerns the quests of the various knights to achieve the Holy Grail; some succeed (Galahad, Percival), and others fail.

The Arthurian tales have been changed throughout time, and other characters have been added to add backstory and expand on other Knights of the Round Table. The medieval legend of Arthur and his knights is full of Christian themes; those themes involve the destruction of human plans for virtue by the moral failures of their characters, and the quest for an important Christian relic. Finally, the relationships between the characters invited treatment in the tradition of courtly love, such as Lancelot and Guinevere, or Tristan and Iseult.

In more recent years, the trend has been to attempt to link the tales of King Arthur and his knights with Celtic mythology, usually in highly romanticized, 20th-century reconstructed versions. The work of Jessie Weston, in particular From Ritual to Romance, traced Arthurian imagery through Christianity to roots in early nature worship and vegetation rites, though this interpretation is no longer fashionable. It is also possible to read the Arthurian literature, particularly the Grail tradition, as an allegory of human development and spiritual growth, a theme explored by mythologist Joseph Campbell amongst others.

title: Matter of Britain


text:
James Thomson (poet, born 1700)

James Thomson (c. 11 September 1700 – 27 August 1748) was a Scottish poet and playwright, known for his poems The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence, and for the lyrics of "Rule, Britannia!"

Scotland, 1700–1725
James Thomson was born in Ednam in Roxburghshire around 11 September 1700 and baptised on 15 September. He was the fourth of nine children of Thomas Thomson and Beatrix Thomson (née Trotter). Beatrix Thomson was born in Fogo, Berwickshire and was a distant relation of the house of Hume. Thomas Thomson was the Presbyterian minister of Ednam until eight weeks after Thomson's birth, when he was admitted as minister of Southdean, where Thomson spent most of his early years.

Thomson may have attended the parish school of Southdean before going to the grammar school in Jedburgh in 1712. He failed to distinguish himself there. Shiels, his earliest biographer, writes: 'far from appearing to possess a sprightly genius, [Thomson] was considered by his schoolmaster, and those which directed his education, as being really without a common share of parts'. He was, however, encouraged to write poetry by Robert Riccaltoun (1691–1769), a farmer, poet and Presbyterian minister; and Sir William Bennet (d. 1729), a whig laird who was a patron of Allan Ramsay. While some early poems by Thomson survive, he burned most of them on New Year's Day each year.

Thomson entered the College of Edinburgh in autumn 1715, destined for the Presbyterian ministry. At Edinburgh he studied metaphysics, Logic, Ethics, Greek, Latin and Natural Philosophy. He completed his arts course in 1719 but chose not to graduate, instead entering Divinity Hall to become a minister. In 1716 Thomas Thomson died, with local legend saying that he was killed while performing an exorcism. At Edinburgh Thomson became a member of the Grotesque Club, a literary group, and he met his lifelong friend David Mallet. After the successful publication of some of his poems in the "Edinburgh Miscellany" Thomson followed Mallet to London in February 1725 in an effort to publish his verse.

London, 1725–1727

In London, Thomson became a tutor to the son of Charles Hamilton, Lord Binning, through connections on his mother's side of the family. Through David Mallet, by 1724 a published poet, Thomson met the great English poets of the day including Richard Savage, Aaron Hill and Alexander Pope. Thomson's mother died on 12 May 1725, around the time of his writing ‘Winter’, the first poem of The Seasons. "Winter" was first published in 1726 by John Millian, with a second edition being released (with revisions, additions and a preface) later the same year.

By 1727, Thomson was working on "Summer", published in February, and was working at Watt's Academy, a school for young gentlemen and a bastion of Newtonian science. In the same year Millian published a poem by Thomson titled "A Poem to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton" (who had died in March). Leaving Watt's Academy, Thomson hoped to earn a living through his poetry, helped by his acquiring several wealthy patrons including Thomas Rundle, the countess of Hertford and Charles Talbot, 1st Baron Talbot.

Later life, 1728–1748
He wrote "Spring" in 1728 and finally "Autumn" in 1730, when the set of four was published together as The Seasons. During this period he also wrote other poems, such as "To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton", and his first play, Sophonisba (1730). The latter is best known today for its mention in Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, where Johnson records that one 'feeble' line of the poem – "O, Sophonisba, Sophonisba, O!" was parodied by the wags of the theatre as, "O, Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson, O!"

In 1730, he became tutor to the son of Sir Charles Talbot, then Solicitor-General, and spent nearly two years in the company of the young man on a tour of Europe. On his return Talbot arranged for him to become a secretary in chancery, which gave him financial security until Talbot's death in 1737. Meanwhile, there appeared his next major work, Liberty (1734). This is a lengthy monologue by the "Goddess of Liberty", describing her travels through the ancient world, and then English and British history, before the resolution of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In 1738 his tragedy Agamemnon was played at Drury Lane and the following year he wrote a prologue when Mallet's Mustapha was performed there.

In 1740, he collaborated with Mallet on the masque Alfred which was first performed at Cliveden, the country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Thomson's words for "Rule, Britannia!", written as part of that masque and set to music by Thomas Arne, became one of the best-known British patriotic songs – quite distinct from the masque which is now virtually forgotten. The Prince gave him a pension of £100 per annum. He had also introduced him to George Lyttelton, who became his friend and patron.

In later years, Thomson lived in Richmond upon Thames, and it was there that he wrote his final work The Castle of Indolence, which was published just before his untimely death on 27 August 1748. Johnson writes about Thomson's death, "by taking cold on the water between London and Kew, he caught a disorder, which, with some careless exasperation, ended in a fever that put end to his life". Thomson died indebted and intestate. To discharge his debts an auction of his goods was held.

A dispute over the publishing rights to one of his works, The Seasons, gave rise to two important legal decisions (Millar v. Taylor; Donaldson v. Beckett) in the history of copyright.

Thomson's The Seasons was translated into German by Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1745). This translation formed the basis for a work with the same title by Gottfried van Swieten, which became the libretto for Haydn's oratorio The Seasons. Some recordings of Haydn’s oratorio use Thomson’s original lyrics as well.

Memorials
Thomson is one of the sixteen Scottish poets and writers appearing on the Scott Monument on Princes Street in Edinburgh. He appears on the right side of the east face.

Thomson has a large memorial in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner, next to William Shakespeare and underneath Thomson's countryman, Robert Burns.

Thomson is the poet memorialised at Poets' Corner in Richmond Park's Pembroke Lodge Gardens. A bench sculpted by Richard Farrington, and known as "Poet's seat", is inscribed with lines by Thomson, who was living in Richmond at the time of his death. A wooden memorial plaque with an ode to Thomson by the writer and historian John Heneage Jesse was installed in 1851. The plaque was replaced by the Selborne Society in 1895 and by a re-gilded board in 2014.

King Henry's Mound, which is also in Richmond Park, has a seat inscribed with a few lines from The Seasons.

Editions

 * The four seasons, and other poems. By James Thomson. London: printed for J. Millan, near Scotland-Yard, White-Hall; and A. Millar, in the Strand, M.DCC.XXXV., 1735. [2];77,[3];64;72;79,[1]p., plates; 8⁰. (ESTC T83; Foxon T242; OTA K019862.000)
 * Patrick Murdoch (ed.), The Works of James Thomson, with his last corrections and improvements, prefixed by an account of his life and writings (Royal Quarto edition, A. Millar, London 1762); Dublin printing by John Exshaw, 1767; Murdoch's revised 4-volume edition of (A. Millar and T. Cadell, London 1768), with Lord Lyttelton's annotations, and 1772-3 edition (R. Clarke, Edinburgh 1772), (W. Bowyer, etc., London 1773) and subsequent versions.
 * Thomson, James & Bloomfield, Robert, The Seasons & Castles of Indolence / The Farmer's Boy, Rural Tales, Banks of the Wye, &c. &c., (London: Scott, Webster & Geary, 1842).
 * Gilfillan, Rev. George, Thomson's Poetical Works, with Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes, Library Edition of the British Poets (1854).
 * Thomson, James. The Seasons (A. Donaldson, Edinburgh 1774; J. Donaldson, London 1776).
 * Thomson, James. The Seasons, by ... A New Edition. Adorned with A Set of Engravings, from Original Paintings. Together with an Original Life of the Author, and a Critical Essay on the Seasons. by Robert Heron, (Perth: R. Morison, 1793).
 * Thomson, James The Seasons and Castle of Indolence Printed for J. and F.C. Rivington and the other proprietors, James Marsh, 1820
 * Thomson, James. Poems, edited by William Bayne, London : Walter Scott Publishing Co., [1900], (Series: The Canterbury poets).
 * Thomson, James. The Seasons, edited with introduction and commentary by James Sambrook, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981) ISBN 0-19-812713-8.
 * Thomson, James. Liberty, The Castle of Indolence and other poems, edited with introduction and commentary by James Sambrook, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986) ISBN 0-19-812759-6.
 * Bayne, William, Life of James Thomson, Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1898, ("Famous Scots Series").

title: James Thomson (poet, born 1700)


text:
Pamela Smart

Pamela Ann Smart (née Wojas; born August 16, 1967) is an American woman who was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and witness tampering in the death of her husband, Greggory Smart, in 1990. Smart, then aged 22, had conspired with her underaged boyfriend, then 15-year-old William "Billy" Flynn, and three of his friends to have Greggory (24) murdered in Derry, New Hampshire. She is currently serving a life sentence at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, a maximum security prison in Westchester County, New York.

Early life
Pamela Smart was born Pamela Wojas in Coral Gables, Florida, on August 16, 1967, the daughter of John and Linda Wojas. She grew up in Miami, Florida, before her family moved to Derry, New Hampshire, when she was in the eighth grade. Pamela attended secondary school at Derry's Pinkerton Academy, where she was a cheerleader, and graduated from Florida State University (FSU) with a degree in communications. At FSU, she was the host of a college radio program.

Pamela met Greggory Smart while she visited New Hampshire over Christmas break in 1986. They formed a relationship in February 1987 and married two years later, with Greggory moving to Florida to live with Pamela during her senior year at FSU. Seven months into their marriage, the couple began having difficulties in their relationship. Pamela took a job as a media coordinator at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, New Hampshire, where she met sophomore student William "Billy" Flynn at Project Self-Esteem, a school drug awareness program where both were volunteers. Pamela also met another intern named Cecelia Pierce, who was friends with Flynn.

Murder of Gregg Smart
On May 1, 1990, Pamela came home from a meeting at work to find her condominium ransacked and her husband Greggory murdered. Police officials said the crime scene looked like a disrupted burglary. Pamela was later accused of seducing 15-year-old Flynn and threatening to withhold sex from him unless he killed her husband. Flynn did so with the help of friends Patrick "Pete" Randall, Vance "J.R." Lattime, Jr., and Raymond Fowler.

During the investigation, Lattime's father brought a .38 caliber pistol he had found in his house to the police, believing it might have been the murder weapon. On May 14, an anonymous tip also indicated that Pamela's friend Cecelia Pierce was aware of the plan. Police talked to Pierce, who agreed to wear a wire and record conversations with Pamela in hopes that she would say something incriminating, which she did.

On August 1, 1990, Detective Daniel Pelletier approached Pamela in her school's parking lot. Smart recognized him, having spoken to him on at least six other occasions. Taken by surprise, she asked, "What's up?" "Well, Pam," Pelletier said in the recording, "I have some good news and I have some bad news. The good news is that we've solved the murder of your husband. The bad news is you're under arrest." "What for?" Smart asked. "First-degree murder." Smart was then handcuffed and arraigned at the Derry District Court and jailed at the New Hampshire State Prison for Women, which was in Goffstown at the time.

Trial
Smart's trial was widely watched and garnered considerable media attention, partly because it was one of the first in the U.S. to allow TV cameras in the courtroom. She faced life in prison if convicted. The prosecution's case relied heavily on testimony from Smart's teenaged co-conspirators, who had secured their own plea bargains before her trial began.

When oral arguments began March 4, 1991, Assistant Attorney General Diane Nicolosi portrayed the teenagers as naïve victims of an "evil woman bent on murder." The prosecution portrayed Pamela Smart as the cold-blooded mastermind who controlled her underaged sex partner. Nicolosi claimed that Smart seduced Flynn to get him to murder her husband, so that she could avoid an expensive divorce and benefit from a $140,000 life insurance policy. In her testimony, Smart acknowledged that she had what she termed an affair with the underaged boy, but claimed that the murder of her husband was solely the doing of Flynn and his friends as a reaction to her telling Flynn that she wished to end their relationship and repair her marriage. She insisted that she neither participated in the murder plot nor had any foreknowledge of it. Though Flynn claimed he had fallen in love with Smart when he first met her, Cecelia Pierce testified at trial that Smart and Flynn were originally just friends. Pierce first noticed a change about February, when Smart confessed to her that she "loved Bill." Flynn testified at trial that he was a virgin before he had sex with Pamela Smart.

After a 14-day trial that culminated on March 22, 1991, in the Rockingham County Superior Court, Smart was found guilty of being an accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and witness tampering. The tampering stemmed from Smart's coercing Pierce to lie to authorities or not to say anything to them. The conviction was largely the result of the testimony of her co-conspirators and secretly taped conversations in which Smart appeared to contradict her claims of having wanted to reconcile with her husband and of having no knowledge of the boys' plot. She could have been charged with capital murder, but the prosecution decided against it. Later that day, she was given a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility for parole.

Smart argued that the media had influenced her trial and conviction, as she explained in the 2014 HBO documentary Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart.

In March 2023, the New Hampshire Supreme Court dismissed Pamela Smart's chance of freedom. This came after asking the Supreme Court to reverse Gov. Chris Sununu's decision to deny her a commutation hearing.

Imprisonment
Smart is serving her life sentence at the maximum-security Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Westchester County, New York, where she was transferred in 1993 from the New Hampshire State Prison for Women in Goffstown. At the time, New Hampshire officials said the transfer was for unspecified "security reasons." Co-defendants William Flynn and Patrick Randall were also transferred out-of-state, in both cases to the Maine State Prison in Warren, Maine.

The specific reasons for Smart's transfer are unclear. In 2007, a senior assistant in the state attorney general's office told the Keene State Equinox that Smart was transferred due to discipline problems. While she had accrued 22 disciplinary reports, all but two of them were for minor offenses. Deputy Compact Administrator Denise Heath claimed that at the time, there were fears that the State Prison for Women was not suitable for a high-profile inmate like Smart, and that it would be too easy for someone to break her out. However, New Hampshire has never had a formal transfer agreement with New York; Heath believed the transfer was a "commissioner to commissioner" arrangement. Smart's family maintains they were never informed of the transfer.

Although she maintained her innocence, Smart conceded that her husband would still be alive if she had not had an affair with Flynn, a minor. While in prison, Smart has tutored other inmates and has completed two master's degrees with concentrations in literature and legal studies from Mercy College, which were paid for with private funds from Mercy College. Smart became a member of the National Organization for Women, campaigning for rights for women in prison.

In October 1996, Smart was severely beaten by two fellow inmates. She sustained a fractured nose and a broken eye socket, which resulted in the insertion of a plastic plate in the left side of her face. The two inmates beat Smart after they accused her of snitching on them about their prison relationship. They were both convicted of second-degree assault in the attack on Smart at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility and were subsequently transferred to separate prisons. As a result of the beating, Smart takes medication for chronic pain and sometimes thinks of suicide. Her counselor, Dr. Eleanor Pam, says that "she has many, many, many dark days."

Smart says she still keeps track of Flynn because she regards him as being the key to her freedom, before the 2023 ruling. "He is one of the few people that could actually get me out of here, by coming forward and telling the truth, but he's never gonna do that," said Smart.

In 2003, photos of a scantily clad Smart were published in the National Enquirer. She filed a complaint against the prison and was placed in solitary confinement for two months. Smart sued in relation to her placement in solitary, but the lawsuit was dismissed. In 2004, Smart and fellow inmate Carolyn Warmus sued officials of Bedford Hills, claiming sexual harassment, and sexual assault by a corrections officer, who they said coerced them into posing for the suggestive pictures published in 2003. On November 5, 2009, a U.S. District Court Judge approved a $23,875 judgment to Smart from the State of New York. Smart received $8,750, while her attorney received the remaining balance for attorney fees.

While serving her sentence, Smart took part in a writer's workshop, which was facilitated by playwright Eve Ensler. The workshop and Smart's writing were exhibited in the 2003 PBS documentary What I Want My Words to Do to You.

In April 2004, the First U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a 2002 ruling by a federal judge who rejected her federal habeas petition. Prior to her federal appeal, Smart had exhausted all judicial appeals at the state level. In July 2005, the New Hampshire Executive Council unanimously denied a pardon request for "any conditions the governor may seek to impose." In an interview with ABC News, Smart indicated she is afraid of growing old and dying in prison and would rather have been given the death penalty.

On March 29, 2023, it was reported that Smart lost her final appeal. With all legal options exhausted, her life sentence is cemented.

On June 11, 2024, as part of an effort to get a sentence reduction, a videotaped statement was released where for the first time ever, Smart accepted responsibility for her husband's death by asserting that she should have "seen the signs", in regards to her allegation that Flynn's actions were of his own volition. She claimed it was done as part of some inner work she was doing on herself.

Conspirators
In 1992, Bill Flynn was sentenced to life in prison for second degree murder; not eligible for parole for 40 years with 12 years of the minimum sentence deferred if he maintains good behavior. Flynn was incarcerated at the Maine State Prison in Warren, where he earned his GED, has been active in charity work and worked as an electrician at the prison. In 2007, Flynn sought a sentence reduction after serving 16 years, stating that he had vowed not to do so until he had spent as many years behind bars as he had spent free. He also apologized to Gregg Smart's family for murdering him. The Smart family opposed the request. On February 12, 2008, the request was denied, although Flynn's earliest parole eligibility date was reduced by three years to 25 years, making him eligible for parole in 2015. In July 2014, Flynn was moved to a minimum security facility in Warren, Maine; the transfer allowed him to participate in a work release program.

Flynn was granted parole by the state parole board on March 12, 2015, and was released from prison with lifetime parole on June 4, 2015, a few days past the 25th anniversary of Gregg Smart's death.

Like Flynn, Patrick Randall was also sentenced to life in prison for second degree murder, eligible for parole after 40 years with 12 years deferred, making him eligible as early as 2018. He too served his sentence at the Maine State Prison in Warren, Maine. In March 2009, a judge reduced Randall's minimum sentence by three years to 25 years, making him eligible for release as early as June 2015. Randall was granted parole by the New Hampshire Parole Board after a hearing on April 9, 2015. He was released on June 4, 2015, on lifetime parole, the same day as co-conspirator Flynn's release and a few days past the 25th anniversary of Gregg Smart's death.

Conspirator and driver Vance Lattime was sentenced to life in prison as an accomplice to second-degree murder, eligible for parole after 30 years with 12 years suspended. In 2005, his minimum sentence was reduced by three years, and he was released on lifetime parole that same year, 15 years after Gregg Smart's death. In 2023, Lattime was denied a sentence reduction that would have seen his parole end.

Conspirator Raymond Fowler (who waited in the car during the killing) was sentenced to 30 years for conspiracy to murder and attempted burglary, and parole eligibility after 15 years. Fowler was paroled in 2003, 13 years after Gregg Smart's death, but was sent back to prison in 2004 for violating his parole terms. He was paroled again in June 2005.

Books

 * The case was the subject of several true crime books, including Teach Me To Kill (ISBN 978-0380766499) and Deadly Lessons (ISBN 978-0312927615).
 * The case was featured in the books Till Death Do Us Part (ISBN 978-1416523130), about murderous spouses, Evil Women (ISBN 978-1788284660), about women who commit murder, and American Murder (ISBN 978-1788284660), which compares media portrayals of famous crimes with the facts.
 * Dean J. Smart, brother of murder victim Gregg Smart, released Skylights and Screendoors (ISBN 978-1-936680023), his memoir, on April 7, 2011.
 * Joyce Maynard drew several elements from the case for her 1992 novel To Die For (ISBN 978-0451186072).
 * The character of Becky Burgess in feminist writer Marge Piercy's novel The Longings of Women (ISBN 978-0449909072) was inspired by Pamela Smart and the conspiracy to kill Greggory Smart.

Television and movies

 * The case was the basis for the NBC Television crime and drama series Law & Order Season 2, Episode 9 "Renunciation", originally aired November 19, 1991.
 * The trial was the basis of the television movie Murder in New Hampshire: The Pamela Wojas Smart Story, starring Helen Hunt and Chad Allen, released 1991.
 * Joyce Maynard's novel was adapted by Buck Henry for Gus Van Sant's 1995 movie To Die For, starring Nicole Kidman and Matt Dillon as the fictional wife and husband, and Joaquin Phoenix as the wife's underaged sex partner.
 * Reel Crime/Real Story a short lived crime documentary series from the Investigation Discovery channel, detailed crimes that became the basis for movies. Smart's crimes are detailed in the episode titled "To Die For" Season 1, Episode 3, originally aired: June 12, 2012.
 * The crime series American Justice played an episode on the case: "Crime of Passion: The Pamela Smart Story", aired May 25, 1996.
 * The murder was parodied in an episode of the animated sitcom Family Guy, "Fast Times at Buddy Cianci Jr. High", season 4, episode 2, aired May 8, 2005.
 * Snapped, an American true crime television series, dedicated its 13th episode in the second season (2005) to the case.
 * The case is referenced on Psych, on the Season 5 episode "Dual Spires", where a character is said to be "pulling a Pamela Smart" after she has allegedly killed a teenage girl while having a sexual relationship with an underage boy, aired December 1, 2010.
 * Smart appeared on Oprah on October 22, 2010. On the show, Smart claimed she was innocent and believes that her sentence for life in prison is too harsh.
 * Scorned: Love Kills, a series on the Investigation Discovery channel, dedicated the Season 1, Episode 4 titled "Hot For Teacher" to the story on February 11, 2012.
 * The HBO documentary Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart was directed by Jeremiah Zagar, aired August 14, 2014.
 * The USA Network series Corrupt Crimes, which investigates crime stories and interviews experts to analyze a wide variety of cases, dedicated an entire episode to Pamela Smart's upbringing, career and murder trial in Season 1, Episode 62, entitled "From Student Seduction to Murder", which aired on February 19, 2016.
 * The Reelz Network series Murder Made Me Famous, a fact-based crime documentary series, aired the Season 2, Episode 1 titled "Pamela Smart" on March 19, 2016.
 * The Oxygen Network series Snapped: Killer Couples, reveals couples whose attractions lead them to carry out crimes, released an episode of Smart and Flynn's case on Season 6, Episode 10, entitled "Pamela Smart & William Flynn", which aired on December 13, 2016.
 * In August 2018, the Investigation Discovery channel released a three-part program titled Pamela Smart: An American Murder Mystery, with a total run-time of 127 minutes:
 * In 2019, on French Chérie 25 channel : Snapped : les couples tueurs Episode 20 "Smart & Flynn"
 * In 2021, the case was featured on Investigation Discovery's Deadly Women in the episode "Killer Intellect."
 * In 2021, the case was featured on Dateline, Season 5, Episode 1, titled “Deadly Secret."

title: Pamela Smart


text:
Talk:New Imperialism/Archive 5B

This entry is WAY too long. - erzengel 15 Apr 2003 1133 UTC

I’m sorry that the entry on New Imperialism was a bit lengthy, but this was a very complex era of history and very much a global phenomenon that cannot be explained by easy answers. The language is already dense and succinct as well. A shorter version would be left laden with reductionisms, sweeping generalizations, and over-simplifications (a twice-banned user tried that, and the results were horrendous). Or it would just be a basic chronology of myriad disparate events, trends, and developments that would not seem, to any lay reader, interconnected with each other or even related to the subject matter of New Imperialism. Or it would just give an overview of what happened without illuminating why it happened or giving readers prerequisite background and context needed to be able to judge for themselves why this epoch of history unfolded the way it did. While I’m sure that there’s room for improvement, a brief offhand criticism on the basis of length will do little to enhance the readability of the article.

172

 * I understand your reservations. But I'm sure it would be possible to split the article (as opposed to dumbing it down). Sorry if the comment above sounded a bit n00bic. erzengel 15 Apr 2003 1533 UTC

--- That would be far too drastic. As it is, each section of the article builds on the previous section. If you spit the article up you’d end up having much more content. Some development explained at the beginning of the page would have to be re-explained in a new article not containing that content. For instance, references the "breakdown of the concert for Europe" or the "breakdown of Pax Britannica" would have to be explained over and over again in many separate articles that would make references to these developments. I’m sympathetic to your cause, but it would be a far better idea to focus on readability rather than length.

Sadly, the article would probably be more readable if it were longer, which would mean that the prose wouldn’t have to be so dense.

172

User:172 threatened me after I linked some words to various articles. I thought this was a bit extreme... He apparently thinks Im some other user who removed text (apparently several users have tried to edit this page) and, since the page most definitely is too large (50+k) I think its hightime somebody remove some of 172s text. Pizza Puzzle

 * This article certainly needs to be split, as it is at such a size that some users will not be able to edit it. There's no need to remove material, however - if there is no better way, it can simply be broken down the middle into New Imperialism part 1 and New Imperialism part 2 (as done with British Penny part 1 through British Penny part 4). --Camembert

Examining the edit history it seems that a user:Vera Cruze, some time ago created theories of imperialism and he moved text there (the latter half of this article greatly consists of the various theories of various individuals) as well as to imperialism. Then he just gave up...I can't blame him seeing the trouble I ran into just trying to  some words. Pizza Puzzle

- Lir/Vera/Pizza Puzzle: If you start butchering this article once again, the only thing that’s going to be removed is you. I'll protect this page; the content will be restored; and you'll be banned. New Imperialism got Vera Cruz banned. It's only a matter of time before it gets you banned. 172

 * 172, I am also advocating splitting the page into smaller parts, please don't turn this into an "us versus them" argument. This article needs to be split up in some way, as it is too big for some users to edit - once an article gets larger than 32KB, some users have trouble saving it after an edit - the end of the article gets chopped off. This is why the length of this article has to be reduced. You are probably more knowledgable than others on the subject of the article (certainly more knowledgable than me), so could you break it up in a way that makes sense? If you don't want to, then that's fine, I'll do it, but I probably won't do it as well. It does need to be done by somebody, however, or certain people aren't going to be able to edit it at all. --Camembert

--- Camembert:

Thanks for your concern. I will break this up into a series. In fact, I've done that to a number of long articles, such as the History of the US and USSR. I plan to do this for Cold War and Great Depression as well. And I'm working on a series for the history of Brazil. See History of Russia for an example of the charts for the series that I've been adding. But it's been like this for months and it's not urgent.

Vera Cruz/Pizza Puzzle, however, cannot be involved. The last time he (Vera Cruz=Pizza Puzzle) tried to hijack this article he started off by pretending to be polite and constructive, but the results are disastrous. See the mailing list and the talk page history for evidence of this. Or ask Jtdril or Tannin why I would be so mortified that PP has an expressed an interest in 'removing some of 172's text.' Tannin, in particular, remembers the Vera Cruz/New Imperialism disaster vividly. 172

Please, spare us from the series concept. Nobody reads all the way through them anyway, so it's just a waste of effort. It's a mark of skill to be able to summarize key issues succinctly, and to provide cross-references to logically connected articles. This article would easily break up into "overview", multiple "history", and multiple "theories" articles. For instance, there should be a Scramble for Africa that is readily accessible to readers interested in Africa, but also gainfully employed and without the spare time to ponder World systems theory and the other dubious theories, plus which it will be a more relevant link than New Imperialism. If for instance I'm a stamp collector interested in understanding British Central Africa, I'm much more likely to link to Scramble for Africa than New Imperialism; the latter title positively screams "Marxist revisionist history" with lots of big hard-to-understand words. :-) But this is all just a suggestion; I don't want to deal with 172 trying to get me banned for disagreeing with him, so I'm not going to touch this article myself, not even to fix the obvious mistakes. Stan 00:59 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Stan I reccomend that text go to imperialism and theories of imperialism with stuff on Cecil Rhodes going there and stuff on the Congo Free State going there...etc etc Pizza Puzzle

- Well, we historians take the past seriously, as well as the contributions of the theorists of political science, economics, sociology, and so forth. I'm sorry that we're concerned with things other than postage stamps. I suggest that you start an article on the history of stamps and leave me alone for not writing about stamps in such an article as this one. 172

 * That wasn't how I read Stan's message - I think he just meant that for somebody writing about, say, British Central Africa, a link to an article specifically on the Scramble for Africa is more pertinent than a link to a more general article on New Imperialism, and that for the non-specialist a series of short articles is easier to take in than a single long one. --Camembert

--- 50 KB! Please learn how to summarize events - this is an encyclopedia. The detail should be spun off into daughter articles and the main points summarized here. The "series" idea is just a technical hack that leaves a useless list of links on the main page (such as at History of the United States - I'm tempted to restore a much older version to serve as a summary of US history that fits on one sub-30KB page). I just hope large chucks of text in this article not duplicated is a half dozen other articles - you've done that before 172 and it is very annoying. That is what hyperlinks and the ability to summarize are for.--mav 02:21 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

- Mav:

Thanks to Lir/Vera this has turned into an attack 172 free-for-all, hasn't it? I'm tempted to just say to hell with it all and leave this site for good. Long before I created the series for the History of the United States, there were series for German and Russian history. People have even suggested that such a series be created for the history of China. Some people have respect for history. Others don't. Some users think that history is relevant. Others want a few facts for trivia. I'm not the only one who has praised the idea of historical series. So far, you and Stan are the only two of whom I'm aware who have such a contempt for the series. Perhaps, it's personal, since I'm involved with the US one. 172

 * Oh stop it with the strawmen please, 172. I didn't take issue with the content but the unusable length and organization (that is, "everything in one page" organization). And History of Germany is a very good example of splitting up content - that is not comparable to History of the United States (which is just a list of links). History of Russia is, IMO, just as bad as the American counterpart - it has no content on the main page. History of Germany does. That is the whole point. When you said "series" the History of the United States article came to mind. And it is a bit insulting to say that that is wanting "trivia" over real history or that I don't have "respect" for history. It is valid complaint about an unmanageably long article - that's all. --mav

 * I didn't mean you, Mav. You'd be one of the last people for whom that would be true. You are extremely knowledgeable and well-rounded, well-versed in a huge array of subjects: history, politics, humanities, natural science, etc. Next to you, I'm just a narrow specialist. I'm just talking about people with that mentality in general. I wrote this statement, over-reacting to being criticized by three people on a single talk-page, misunderstanding your point about the series. Now that I know that you have the history of Germany page in mind as a model, I realize that our positions are exactly the same. Sorry for the misunderstandings. 172

 * WikiHug. I'm sorry too. --mav

Just for the record: I personally am not very bothered about how this article gets split up, so long as it is split up. My only concern is that, as it stands, the article is uneditable for some users. --Camembert

Neither am I. Look at the History of Germany series, a model for those interested in in-depth, scholarly, and complete surveys of history. 172

 * Indeed the Germany history is a good example of how to partition usefully. I mentioned postage stamps because many collectors are curious about the history behind their little pieces of paper, and Wikipedia has the potential to connect the hobby interest to the historical context. In particular, 19th century imperialism drove the development of postal systems worldwide, and the stamps in collectors' albums today are mute but concrete evidences of that process. Stan 05:47 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

theories of imperialism has duplicate text from this page. Pizza Puzzle

--- For everyone's information, theories of imperialism was an article that Pizza Puzzle created under the banned user name, Vera Cruz. It's a useless article that hasn't been edited by a single user, not linked to a single page. I favor deleting it. 172

I don't have a clue why 172 thinks I am some other user. Pizza Puzzle

Why does 172 keep removing the text here? Much of this was just posted yesterday, and the comments by erzengel (back in April) are certainly relevant. Pizza Puzzle

I'm placing it in this archive, not removing it. 172

title: Talk:New Imperialism/Archive 5B