- Ripon
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cathedral city, Harrogate borough, administrative county of North Yorkshire, historic county of Yorkshire, England. It lies in the upper valley of the River Ure, 27 miles (43 km) north of Leeds. St. Eata, abbot of Melrose, founded a Celtic monastery there about 651. About 10 years later St. Wilfrid (Wilfrid, Saint) founded a Benedictine monastery and became its abbot, and he also built a famous church, whose crypt may still be seen under the present-day cathedral; Wilfrid's church and monastery were destroyed by the Danes in the 9th century. The principal attraction of modern Ripon is its cathedral, which was constructed between 1154 and 1520 and displays styles from late Norman to Perpendicular Gothic. The city also has a spacious market square and is a local service and tourist centre for Yorkshire Dales National Park. The impressive ruins of Fountains Abbey, a Cistercian monastery, stand 3 miles (5 km) southwest of Ripon. Pop. (2001) 15,922.city, Fond du Lac county, east-central Wisconsin, U.S. It lies 20 miles (30 km) west of Fond du Lac and 80 miles (130 km) northwest of Milwaukee. In 1844 the Wisconsin Phalanx, a group of followers of the 19th-century French socialist philosopher Charles Fourier (Fourier, Charles), organized a communal settlement there known as Ceresco (for Ceres, Roman goddess of agriculture). It was disbanded in 1851 and absorbed in 1853 by the adjacent settlement of Ripon (founded 1849). The latter, named for Ripon in North Yorkshire, England, was incorporated in 1858 and became a stronghold of the abolition movement. On May 20, 1854, in a frame schoolhouse on the campus of Ripon College (founded in 1851, opened as a preparatory school in 1853, and reorganized as a college in 1863), antislavery members of the Democratic (Democratic Party), Whig (Whig Party), and Free-Soil (Free-Soil Party) parties held a meeting at which a new political party was proposed. This was the origin of the Republican Party, which came to power in 1861 under Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln, Abraham). The Little White Schoolhouse is maintained as a museum and claimed as the birthplace of the Republican Party (although the convention that actually launched the party took place in Jackson, Michigan, on July 6, 1854).Ripon's economy depends on food processing (particularly cookies), the manufacture of washing machines and dryers, and advertising specialties. Area agriculture includes dairying, corn (maize), soybeans, vegetables, and livestock. Annual events include a jazz festival (June) and RiponFest (July). Ripon was the birthplace of the American suffragist leader Carrie Chapman Catt (Catt, Carrie Chapman). Pop. (1990) 7,241; (2000) 6,828.
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Universalium. 2010.
