▶︎ History
■ America 250
St. Anthony of Padua: A safe haven for generations of immigrants
The red sandstone church in the North End was built by French Canadians, but it has also embraced Portuguese and Central American newcomers.
New Bedford has embraced the ‘tired, poor, huddled masses’ throughout its history
Immigrants fleeing famine, natural disasters, civil wars and other terrors have found a home in the arms of this historically diverse city.
No tea, no party: Remembering New Bedford’s role in the Boston Tea Party
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.
The first drops of Revolution; Remembering the Battle off Fairhaven
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.
Native Americans on the 250th: Commemorate but not celebrate
A descendant of Massasoit and Paul Cuffe, Chief Robert Cox is developing inherited farmland into a food forest where both tribal and community members can find respite.
The revolutionary imprisonments of Paul Cuffe
Both the British and the Americans jailed him for believing in the tenets of the Revolution. A ship’s captain and the son of a slave, he defied a British blockade — then refused to pay taxes without representation.
Hidden plaque is New Bedford’s only tribute to Grey’s Raid
The city should use the 250th anniversary of the day the British burned New Bedford to create a more appropriate tribute to the seminal event.
The good pirates of the South Coast
The men aboard the Warren saw themselves as patriots, fighting for their new country. To the British ship crews they attacked, they were pirates.
How Old Dartmouth joined the American Revolution
Patriotic spirit swept through the South Coast in the years leading up to independence, newly transcribed town records show.
■ More South Coast history
Meet the Dartmouth man working to save the American chestnut
For 14 years, Scott Dunn has bred American chestnut trees in hopes that some saplings make it to maturity.
The revolutionary battle that reshaped New Bedford forever
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.
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.
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.
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.
‘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.
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
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.
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.
‘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.”
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