Jamestown

Jamestown often refers to:

Jamestown may also refer to:

Places

Australia

Barbados

Canada

Ghana

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New Zealand

Saint Kitts and Nevis

South Africa

United Kingdom

Vacation

A vacation or holiday is a leave of absence from a regular occupation, or a specific trip or journey, usually for the purpose of recreation or tourism. People often take a vacation during specific holiday observances, or for specific festivals or celebrations. Vacations are often spent with friends or family.

A person may take a longer break from work, such as a sabbatical, gap year, or career break.

The concept of taking a vacation is a recent invention, and has developed through the last two centuries. Historically, the idea of travel for recreation was a luxury that only wealthy people could afford (see Grand Tour). In the Puritan culture of early America, taking a break from work for reasons other than weekly observance of the Sabbath was frowned upon. However, the modern concept of vacation was led by a later religious movement encouraging spiritual retreat and recreation. The notion of breaking from work periodically took root among the middle and working class.

Etymology

In the United Kingdom, vacation once specifically referred to the long summer break taken by the law courts and then later the term was applied to universities. The custom was introduced by William the Conqueror from Normandy where it facilitated the grape harvest. In the past, many upper-class families moved to a summer home for part of the year, leaving their usual home vacant.

Colonial Williamsburg

Colonial Williamsburg is a living-history museum and private foundation presenting part of a historic district in the city of Williamsburg, Virginia, USA. Colonial Williamsburg's 301-acre (122 ha) Historic Area includes buildings from the eighteenth century (during part of which the city was the capital of Colonial Virginia), as well as 17th-century, 19th-century, Colonial Revival structures and more recent reconstructions. The Historic Area is an interpretation of a colonial American city, with exhibits of dozens of restored or re-created buildings related to its colonial and American Revolutionary War history.

In the late 1920s, the restoration and re-creation of colonial Williamsburg was championed by the Reverend Dr. W. A. R. Goodwin, other community leaders, such organizations as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (now called Preservation Virginia), the Colonial Dames, the Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Chamber of Commerce as well as the scion of the Rockefeller family, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and his wife, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, to celebrate rebel patriots and the early history of the United States.

Historic Jamestowne

Historic Jamestowne is the cultural heritage site that was the location of the 1607 James Fort and the later 17th century city of Jamestown. It is located on the James River at Jamestown, Virginia and operated as a partnership between Preservation Virginia (formerly known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities) and the U.S. National Park Service.

The site was designated Jamestown National Historic Site on December 18, 1940, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966. It is adjacent and complementary with Jamestown Settlement, a living history museum built run by the Commonwealth of Virginia to interpret the early colony.

The mission of Historic Jamestowne is to "preserve, protect and promote the original site of the first permanent English settlement in North America and to tell the story of the role of the three cultures, European, North American and African, that came together to lay the foundation for a uniquely American form of democratic government, language, free enterprise and society."

Rhode Island

Rhode Island (ⁱ/ˌroʊdˈaɪlənd/, officially the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, is a state in the New England region of the United States. Rhode Island is the smallest in area, the eighth least populous, and the second most densely populated (behind New Jersey) of the 50 U.S. states; its official name is also the longest of any state in the Union. Rhode Island is bordered by Connecticut to the west, Massachusetts to the north and east, and the Atlantic Ocean (via Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound) to the south.

On May 4, 1776, Rhode Island became the first of the Thirteen Colonies to renounce its allegiance to the British Crown, and later, was the fourth to ratify—February 9, 1778—the Articles of Confederation between the newly sovereign states. It boycotted the 1787 convention that drew up the United States Constitution, and initially refused to ratify it. On May 29, 1790, Rhode Island became the thirteenth and last state to ratify the Constitution.