For America’s 250th, remembering the Revolutionary War battle that set New Bedford ablaze — and revisiting the overlooked house that played an outsized role in history.
Category: History
Posted inThe Chat with Jack Spillane
The lives of Cape Verdean whalers
Watch The Chat and hear from a panel of Cape Verdean whaler descendants and experts as they tell the stories of these great men and their families.
Posted inHistory
The first drops of Revolution; Remembering the Battle off Fairhaven, 250 years later
A daring rescue mission from New Bedford’s harbor pitted everyday farmers and sailors against the world’s most powerful navy. The most surprising part — they won.
Posted inAppreciation
The last elephants of New Bedford
Since 1968, elephants have lived in New Bedford, somewhere that the world may never have intended. These creatures have warmed the hearts of thousands of frosty New Englanders, and softened them into perhaps the strangest elephant family in existence.
Posted inHistory
‘I was there’: 50 years later, Dartmouth man recalls his role in Portuguese revolution
The morning of the coup, April 25, 1974, jubilant crowds sallied forth onto the streets of Lisbon to shower the soldiers with cheers, leftist political slogans, and red carnations that the troops proceeded to put in their gun barrels.
Posted inHistory
New Bedford seeks artists for Melville memorial
“New Bedford is the setting for what is arguably the preeminent work of American literature. … As it was until recently with Frederick Douglass, honoring Melville with a statue in New Bedford is long overdue.” — New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell
Posted inHistory
No tea, no party: Remembering New Bedford’s role in the Boston Tea Party, 250 years later
The Rotch family’s decision to carry hundreds of chests of taxable tea from England to Boston stirred colonists to take their boldest action yet against imperial rule.
Posted inHistory
Four years and 6,000 handwritten pages later, a peek into Quaker history
The project provides a glimpse into the lives of the Quakers of Southeastern Massachusetts: marriages, disputes among members, theology, responses to slavery and war, contacts with Quakers elsewhere, and, yes, much time spent at the monthly business meetings enforcing the discipline of the faith.
Posted inHistory
‘Women Warriors’ and the fight for Cape Verdean independence
Ana Maria Cabral’s visit will highlight the role women played in the revolution to free Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. “Ever since the war and the struggle, these women have never been really recognized.”
Posted inHistory
Video: Abolition Row Park ‘an enduring source of pride and inspiration’
New Bedford Historical Society President Lee Blake and elected officials celebrated their accomplishments at a ribbon cutting that debuted the transformation of a “blighted plot into a testament of the city’s amazing abolition history.”