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NEW BEDFORD HISTORYBy Donna Anuszczyk, Standard-Times correspondent
In 1602, English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold set foot on New Bedford's shore and was greeted with the scent of dense forest and Indian campfires. The Wampanoag Indians, welcomed Gosnold and his crew "with all courteous kindness entertained him, giving him certain skins of wild beasts, etc.." This, according to a journal belonging to a member of the exploration party.
It was intended that a handful of Gosnold's exploration party would stay behind to establish a permanent trading post, but none remained for fear of losing their share of profits from the voyage. Years later, in 1620, Pilgrims landed in Plymouth and, again, the Indians welcomed Englishmen.
In 1652, these English settlers acquired land from Wampanoag Chief Massasoit and his eldest son Wamsutta. This land encompassed present day New Bedford, Dartmouth, Westport, Acushnet, and Fairhaven. It was then named "Dartmouth" and was incorporated in 1664.
(It wasn't until 1787 that the land was divided into three parcels. Today's New Bedford, Acushnet and Fairhaven was called "Bedford." The center tract retained the name "Dartmouth," and the western tract became "Westport.")
Indians and settlers had lived as neighbors in relative peace, though an underlying mistrust developed over the years after 1652.
Only the powerful presence and influence of the great Massasoit kept the two groups from battling. Upon his death in 1661, the peaceful times dwindled, and in 1675 the tension erupted into a full-blown engagement known as King Philip's War, after the younger son of Massasoit, known to settlers as King Philip.
King Philip vowed to eradicate Englishmen from Indian Territory.
The war lasted a year. All the houses in old Dartmouth (Dartmouth, New Bedford, Fairhaven, and Westport), with the exception of 3 garrisons used for refuge, were destroyed, and many settlers were massacred. At the same time, the Wampanoags were virtually wiped out.
After the war, the settlers began to rebuild, and the town grew slowly during its first century. People in search of religious freedom migrated here from Plymouth, Newport and Portsmouth, RI.
Quakers and Baptists suffering at the hands of the Puritans were imprisoned, tortured, their property confiscated, and killed --- so many ran. They found safe haven in the forests of what eventually became New Bedford.
In 1699, the first Friends meetinghouse was built, nine years before a state church (Congregational Church) was established. Quakers and Baptists refused to pay taxes, and in 1729 the General Court of Massachusetts passed a law exempting them from taxation for the support of town churches.
At this time, land composing New Bedford was owned by only two families -- the Joseph Russell family and the Ephraim Kempton family. The Russell family, in particular Joseph Russell III, is considered the founder of New Bedford because of his land purchases along the Acushnet River and the overlooking heights. In 1765, Mr. Russell sold 10 acres of this land to Nantucket whaling merchant Joseph Rotch.
Joseph Rotch moved his business to New Bedford, bringing experience, capital, and technological innovation. He and his sons revolutionized whaling, and began New Bedford's future as "The Whaling City."
Whaling was actually first done by Indians. In canoes, they waited until "right whales," so named because they were the "right ones," came to them. The Indians then killed the whales and hauled them to shore. Later, settlers didn't venture far from shore until the whales became fewer.
Whalers next built small schooners and sloops to search for whales. After capturing one or two whales, they towed them to shore. Blubber was cut up and hauled by oxen to Joseph Russell's tryworks, at the foot of Centre Street, where the blubber was turned into oil.
During the early and mid 1800s, New Bedford was the most successful whaling port in the world. In 1857, more whalers called New Bedford home than all other whaling ports combined. There were a total of 329 whaling vessels in New Bedford's fleet which employed 10,000 men. The city's whaling industry was worth approximately $12 million.
But then petroleum was discovered in 1859, a development which quickly caused the decline of the whaling industry in New Bedford and throughout the world. The last whaling voyage left New Bedford in 1925.
In 1941, the New Bedford Whaler, "Charles W. Morgan," which had been launched in New Bedford 100 years earlier and was the only surviving whale ship from the "golden era of American whaling," finally left home for the last time to reside at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut.
Herman Melville's classic novel, "Moby-Dick," was born out of a whaling voyage Melville embarked upon aboard the ship "Acushnet," out of New Bedford. In the novel many references are made to New Bedford including the famous paragraph, "Nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like houses, parks and gardens more opulent, than New Bedford."
Before whaling reached its plateau in New Bedford, in 1773, a New Bedford whale ship, "Dartmouth," sailed to London with a shipment of whale oil. On its return, it carried 114 chests of tea to Boston. On the night of Dec. 16, American patriots disguised as Indians, boarded the Dartmouth and two other ships dumping the tea into the harbor, hence the Boston Tea Party, and one of the early engagements of the Revolutionary War.
On September 5, 1778, the British landed at Clark's Point and marched through New Bedford, to Acushnet, and back to Fairhaven, burning wharves, buildings and ships. The business and waterfront section of New Bedford suffered complete devastation. It would be seven years before another whaler sailed from New Bedford's port.
In 1791, the "Rebecca" became the first American whaler to go round Cape Horn returning to New Bedford, in 1793.
In 1772, New Bedford's fire department was established. New Bedford's first newspaper, "The Medley" or "New Bedford's Marine Journal," published its first issue in 1792. In 1794, the first post office was established, and in 1827, New Bedford High School welcomed its first students.
In 1796, the first bridge, a toll bridge, connected New Bedford and Fairhaven, under the direction of William Rotch. The bridge caved under a great tide in 1807. Another bridge, erected in its place, was again washed away by the September gale of 1815. A third bridge was constructed in 1819.
In 1812, Fairhaven broke from New Bedford, establishing a town of its own to include Acushnet. The separation was spurred by differences in opinions with New Bedford's townsfolk during the presidential election of that same year. New Bedford voted for a Federal, or peace party, and Fairhaven opted for the Republican, or war party.
The War of 1812 officially began in June, and the first whaler to be captured was the New Bedford schooner, "Mount Hope." When the war ended in 1815, New Bedford was left to recover from yet another war they had not wanted or supported.
A significant person who emerged from New Bedford's soil, was Paul Cuffee, a black Quaker instrumental in beginning the organized Black Nationalist movements in the United States. Cuffee was born in 1759 on Cuttyhunk, the child of freed slave John Slocum, and Wampanoag Indian, Ruth Moses Slocum. In 1780, he and six others, petitioned the Colonial government of Massachusetts for the right of blacks to vote as taxpayers. This right was officially recognized three years later.
Arriving in New Bedford in 1837 as a runaway slave, Frederick Douglass, (1818?-1895), became one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement which fought to end slavery within the United States in the decade prior to the Civil War.
Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, in Tuckahoe, Maryland, he fled to New Bedford and dropped his two middle names, changing his last name to Douglass, in order to avoid capture. Douglass got a job as a caulker, caulking ships making them watertight, but men refused to work with him because he was black, so Douglass went on to hold unskilled jobs, such as collecting rubbish and digging cellars.
In 1841, at a meeting of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, Douglass spoke about what freedom meant to him. Impressed with his speech, the society hired him to lecture about his experiences as a slave. In 1845, Douglass published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
New Bedford was an active station on the "Underground Railway," which was neither underground nor a railroad, but was a loose network of aid and assistance to fugitives from bondage. It is said that as many as 100,000 enslaved persons may have escaped bondage in the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War.
Another individual who left her mark on New Bedford was Henrietta Howland "Hetty" Green (1835 -1916). Known as the "Witch of Wall Street" and once considered the wealthiest woman in the world, was also the most miserly. Her son, Colonel Edward Green, apparently dedicated his life to spending and giving away every last cent of his inheritance, after losing a leg as a child because his mother was too cheap to have it cared for by professional doctors, or so the story goes.
In New Bedford, in 1847, Abraham Hathaway Howland was elected first mayor. In 1869 the city water system was established. In 1871, St. John the Baptist Parish, the first Portuguese parish in the U.S. was established in New Bedford.
Today, New Bedford has the largest percentage Portuguese population in the U.S.
Immigration played a major role in U.S. history and was no less significant in New Bedford specifically. Whaling brought Cape Verdeans to the area in large numbers. Today a majority of New Bedford residents trace their ancestry to Portugal and the Azores.
As whaling declined, the expansion of manufacturing and textiles lured hundreds of thousands of European immigrants to the area.
The First French parish, the Church of the Sacred Heart, was dedicated in 1877. Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the city's first Polish parish, established in 1903. In 1899, Ahavath Achim, the first synagogue was completed.
As whaling declined, two other industries rapidly rose to maintain the wealth and power of the city. Manufacturing and textiles would be the key to the city's success in the latter part of 19th century and, along with fishing, most of the 20th.
In 1861, Samuel A. Morse developed a drill with a straight edge rather than the usual concave cutting edge, which was prone to break at the point. In 1863, he obtained a patent for his new drill, and by the following year he set up a shop in New Bedford which eventually became Morse Cutting Tools, providing long-time employment for many in New Bedford and neighboring towns. By 1872 the popularity of the drill had spread all over the U.S. and overseas.
For many years, the Morse Cutting Tools brick mill building was part of New Bedford's landscape until, in January of 1990 the company closed and in 1997 the mill was demolished. Many other maufactjuring plants followed the same cycle, closing in the last two decades of the 20th century.
Between 1881 and World War I, New Bedford was one of the leading textile manufacturing centers in the world. At that time, 32 cotton manufacturing companies, worth $100,000,000 employing over 30,000 people were incorporated in New Bedford.
In 1928, the largest labor strike in New England paralyzed New Bedford and changed the course of the city's history. For six months more than 20,000 workers were on strike over drastic wage cuts imposed unilaterally by mill owners.
In 1898, the New Bedford Textile School was established. It would ultimately become a world famous textile institute and eventually would evolve into UMASS Dartmouth.
Nature has given and taken its share of New Bedford's wealth over cen turies.
The harbor and the nearby sea gave. Storms took.
The giant hurricane of 1938 hit New England, including New Bedford, with a vengeance. Wind gusts up to 183 mph. and a 12-16 foot storm surge left billions of dollars in damage and 600 people dead.
In 1966 the Hurricane Barrier was completed protecting the inner harbor of New Bedford. It is the largest stone structure on the East Coast of the U.S. --9,100 feet long and 20 feet above average sea level.
Today New Bedford is one of the leading fishing ports in the country. At the height of the industry, more than 250 boats operates out of the harbor, bring in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fish and scallops each year.
As a seacoast city, New Bedford is once again trying to reclaim its status as one of New England's premier cities with the emergence of the Whaling National Historic Park in the waterfront district, and plans for a world class aquarium.
The city is shedding its mill-town image and among its fastest growing new industries is aquaculture, raising fish in indoor tanks.
As a city of the sea, she has opened her arms to strangers who have birthed generations calling this place home.
Sources:
New Bedford A Pictorial History, by Judith A. Boss and Joseph D. Thomas
New Bedford Website --- NEWBEDFORD.COM
Southcoast Today, S-T.COM/TOWNS/TTNEWBED.HTM
Antone Souza, executive director WHALE
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