The New England Portal

P:NEWENG

New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (and the Mid-Atlantic) to the southwest, by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick to the northeast and Quebec to the north. The Gulf of Maine and Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the southwest. Boston is New England's largest city, as well as the capital of Massachusetts. Greater Boston is the largest metropolitan area, with nearly a third of New England's population; this area includes Worcester, Massachusetts (the second-largest city in New England), Manchester, New Hampshire (the largest city in New Hampshire), and Providence, Rhode Island (the capital of and largest city in Rhode Island).

In 1620, the Pilgrims established Plymouth Colony, the second successful English settlement in America, following the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia founded in 1607. Ten years later, Puritans established Massachusetts Bay Colony north of Plymouth Colony. Over the next 126 years, people in the region fought in four French and Indian Wars, until the English colonists and their Iroquois allies defeated the French and their Algonquian allies in America. (Full article...)

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The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) is a privately owned museum in Massachusetts whose stated aim is "to celebrate the labor of artists whose work would be displayed and appreciated in no other forum". It has three branches, one in Dedham, another in nearby Somerville, and a third branch in Brookline. Its permanent collection includes 500 pieces of "art too bad to be ignored", 25 to 35 of which are on public display at any one time.

MOBA was founded in 1994, after antique dealer Scott Wilson showed a painting he had recovered from the trash to some friends, who suggested starting a collection. Within a year, receptions held in Wilson's friends' home were so well-attended that the collection required its own viewing space. The museum moved to the basement of a theater in Dedham. Explaining the reasoning behind the museum's establishment, co-founder Jerry Reilly said in 1995: "While every city in the world has at least one museum dedicated to the best of art, MOBA is the only museum dedicated to collecting and exhibiting the worst." To be included in MOBA's collection, works must be original and have serious intent, but they must also have significant flaws without being boring; curators are not interested in displaying deliberate kitsch. (Full article...)

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Ellis Paul performing in Oklahoma in 2010

Ellis Paul is an American singer-songwriter and folk musician. Born in Aroostook County, Maine, Paul is a key figure in what has become known as the Boston school of songwriting, a literate, provocative and urbanely romantic folk-pop style that helped ignite the folk revival of the 1990s. His pop music songs have appeared in movies and on television, bridging the gap between the modern folk sound and the populist traditions of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

Having grown up in a small town in Maine, Paul attended Boston College on a track scholarship where he majored in English. An athletic injury sustained during his junior year changed the course of his professional career. Paul picked up a guitar to pass the time while sidelined, and discovered that playing guitar and writing songs was the creative outlet he had been looking for. After graduating from college he began playing at open mic nights in the Boston area while working with inner-city school children. Paul's growing popularity at Boston coffeehouses, coupled with winning a Boston Acoustic Underground songwriter competition and national exposure on a Windham Hill Records compilation combined to give him the confidence to resign his day-job and pursue a career as a professional musician. (Full article...)

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Garter snake

Credit: Steve Jurvetson (2007)

Garter Snake, the official reptile of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

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The following are images from various New England-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1First Boston Latin School house (from History of New England)
Image 2New England is home to four of the eight Ivy League universities. Pictured here is Harvard Yard of Harvard University. (from New England)
Image 3Phillips Exeter Academy and Phillips Academy are two prestigious New England secondary schools founded in the late 18th century (from New England)
Image 4An English map of New England c. 1670 depicts the area around modern Portsmouth, New Hampshire. (from New England)
Image 5Flag of the New England Governor's Conference (NEGC) (from New England)
Image 69. Cambridge, Massachusetts (from New England)
Image 7Cambridge, Massachusetts, has a high concentration of startups and technology companies. (from New England)
Image 8A 1779 five-shilling note issued by Massachusetts (from History of New England)
Image 98. Hartford, Connecticut (from New England)
Image 10Ethnic origins in New England (from New England)
Image 116. Stamford, Connecticut (from New England)
Image 12A classic New England Congregational church in Peacham, Vermont (from New England)
Image 13Autumn in New England, watercolor, Maurice Prendergast, c. 1910–1913 (from New England)
Image 14World's largest Irish flag in Boston. People who claim Irish descent constitute the largest ethnic ancestry in New England. (from New England)
Image 15The Slater Mill Historic Site in Pawtucket, Rhode Island (from New England)
Image 16Southeastern New England is home to a number of Lusophone ethnic enclaves. (from New England)
Image 17Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston and spent most of his literary career in Concord, Massachusetts. (from Culture of New England)
Image 1810. Manchester, New Hampshire (from New England)
Image 19Montpelier, Vermont, is the smallest state capital in the United States. (from New England)
Image 20A portion of the north-central Pioneer Valley in Sunderland, Massachusetts (from New England)
Image 21A 1638 engraving depicting the Mystic massacre (from New England)
Image 223. Providence, Rhode Island (from New England)
Image 23Largest self-reported ancestry groups in New England. Americans of Irish descent form a plurality in most of Massachusetts, while Americans of English descent form a plurality in much of the central parts of Vermont and New Hampshire as well as nearly all of Maine. (from New England)
Image 24The MBTA Commuter Rail serves eastern Massachusetts and parts of Rhode Island, radiating from downtown Boston, with planned service to New Hampshire. The CTrail system operates the Shore Line East and Hartford Line, covering coastal Connecticut, Hartford, and Springfield, Massachusetts. (from New England)
Image 25Map of the British and French dominions in America in 1755, showing what the English considered New England (from History of New England)
Image 26An illustration from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (from Culture of New England)
Image 277. New Haven, Connecticut (from New England)
Image 28New England's Siege of Louisbourg (1745) by Peter Monamy (from New England)
Image 29Flag of New England flying in Massachusetts. New Englanders maintain a strong sense of regional and cultural identity. (from New England)
Image 30A plowed field in Bethel, Vermont (from New England)
Image 31Köppen climate types in New England (from New England)
Image 32The Port of Portland in Portland, Maine, is the largest tonnage seaport in New England. (from New England)
Image 33The White Mountains of New Hampshire are part of the Appalachian Mountains. (from New England)
Image 344. Springfield, Massachusetts (from New England)
Image 352. Worcester, Massachusetts (from New England)
Image 36A political and geographical map of New England shows the coastal plains in the southeast, and hills, mountains and valleys in the west and the north. (from New England)
Image 37Classic New England Congregationalist church in Peacham, Vermont (from Culture of New England)
Image 385. Bridgeport, Connecticut (from New England)
Image 39Boston's Symphony Hall is the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra—the second-oldest of the Big Five American symphony orchestras. (from New England)
Image 40Bread and Roses Strike. Massachusetts National Guard troops surround unarmed strikers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1912. (from New England)
Image 41Alumni Hall at Saint Anselm College has served as a backdrop for media reports during the New Hampshire primary. (from New England)
Image 42The New England Ensign, one of several flags historically associated with New England. This flag was reportedly used by colonial merchant ships sailing out of New England ports, 1686 – c. 1737. (from New England)
Image 43A New England town meeting in Huntington, Vermont (from New England)
Image 44Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (from New England)
Image 45Certificate of the government of Massachusetts Bay acknowledging loan of £20 to state treasury 1777 (from History of New England)
Image 46Opera houses and theaters, like the Vergennes Opera House in Vergennes, Vermont, are popular in New England towns. (from Culture of New England)
Image 47Indigenous territories, circa 1600 in present-day southern New England (from New England)
Image 48Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom is set on a fictional New England island and was largely filmed in Rhode Island (from New England)
Image 49Soldier and explorer John Smith coined the name "New England" in 1616. (from New England)
Image 501. Boston, Massachusetts (from New England)
Image 51Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire (from New England)
Image 52A Hartford Line train at Hartford Union Station (from New England)
Image 53New England regionalist poet Robert Frost (from New England)
Image 54The New Haven system (from History of New England)
Image 55The Hartford headquarters of Aetna is housed in a 1931 Colonial Revival building. (from New England)

Did you know (auto-generated)

... that the tugboat R. B. Forbes was the first iron mercantile vessel built in New England?
... that Benjamin Tompson's poem "Harvardine Quils" called for writers in New England to memorialize the loss of "whole towns and Churches" in King Philip's War?
... that the Chippewa have smoked the root of the New England aster in pipes to attract game?
... that Rockstar New England is based in Andover, Massachusetts, because it is the founder's "favorite place"?
... that the first railroad in New England was powered by horses?
... that Cora Agnes Benneson, one of the first female lawyers in New England, was rejected by Harvard Law School because "the equipments were too limited to make suitable provision for receiving women"?
... that Clayton Weishuhn set the New England Patriots single-season record of 229 tackles in 1983, a record that still stands?

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More did you know...

... that Major League Baseball player Dan Coogan later coached the baseball teams at the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, Bowdoin College, and Georgetown University?
... that Gene Sharp's book on the American Struggle for Independence supports President Adams' claim that the revolution was "substantially effected before hostilities commenced"?
... that Harriet Hanson Robinson went on strike from her job as a bobbin doffer at age eleven?
... that during the Antinomian Controversy, Anne Hutchinson withstood two separate trials without counsel before being banished from Massachusetts?
... that in 1885, American neurologist James Leonard Corning became the first to perform neuraxial anesthesia?

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Flag of New Hampshire

New Hampshire
Incorporated 1776
Co-ordinates 44°N 71.5°W

New Hampshire, named after the southern English county of Hampshire, is the 5th least extensive and the 9th least populous of the 50 U.S. states.

It became the first post-colonial sovereign nation in the Americas when it broke off from Great Britain in January 1776, and six months later was one of the original thirteen states that founded the United States of America. In June 1788, it became the ninth state to ratify the United States Constitution, bringing that document into effect. New Hampshire was the first U.S. state to have its own state constitution.

It is known internationally for the New Hampshire primary, the first primary in the U.S. presidential election cycle. Concord is the state capital, while Manchester is the largest city in the state. It has no general sales tax, nor is personal income (other than interest and dividends) taxed at either the state or local level. (Full article...)

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Passenger rail	MBTA (MA, RI) CapeFLYER (MA) Northeast Corridor (CT, MA, RI) Acela (CT, MA, RI) Downeaster (ME, NH, MA) Vermonter (CT, MA, NH, VT) Shore Line East (CT) Metro-North (CT) Hartford Line (CT, MA) New Haven Line (CT) Valley Flyer (CT, MA) Hartford Line (Amtrak) (CT, MA) High-speed Northern New England (proposed)
Major Interstates	I-84 (CT, MA) I-89 (NH, VT) I-90 (Mass Pike) (MA) I-91 (CT, MA, VT) I-93 (MA, NH, VT) I-95 (CT, RI, MA, NH, ME) defunct: New England road marking system
Airports	Bradley (CT) Burlington (VT) T. F. Green (RI) Manchester–Boston (NH) Logan (MA) New Haven (CT) Portland (ME) Worcester (MA)