New Bedford Massachusetts History & Facts

New Bedford (Massachusett: Accushnet) is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. It is located on the Acushnet River in what is known as the South Coast region. Up through the 17th century, the area was the territory of the Wampanoag Native American people. English colonists bought the land on which New Bedford would later be built from the Wampanoag in 1652, and the original colonial settlement that would later become the city was founded by English Quakers in the late 17th century. The town of New Bedford itself was officially incorporated in 1787.

During the first half of the 19th century, New Bedford was one of the world's most important whaling ports. At its economic height during this period, New Bedford was the wealthiest city in the world per capita. New Bedford was also a center of abolitionism at this time. The city attracted many freed or escaped African-American slaves, including Frederick Douglass, who lived there from 1838 until 1841. The city also served as the primary setting of Herman Melville's 1851 novel, Moby-Dick. From 1876 to 1900, New Bedford served as the initial home port for the Revenue Cutter School of Instruction, the precursor of the United States Coast Guard Academy.

As of the 2020 United States Census, New Bedford had a population of 101,079, making it the state's ninth-largest city and the largest of the South Coast region. The city is also known for its high concentration of Portuguese Americans. New Bedford remains known for its fishing fleet and accompanying seafood industry, which as of 2019 generated the highest annual value of any fishing port in the United States. The city is also home to the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Before the 17th century, the lands along the Acushnet River were inhabited by the Wampanoag Native Americans, who had settlements throughout southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, including Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Their population is believed to have been about 12,000.

Territories of the Wampanoag people around 1620, between first European explorations of the Acushnet River in 1602 and the establishment of Old Dartmouth in 1652.
On May 15, 1602, English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold in the ship Concord landed on Cuttyhunk Island while exploring New England. From there, he explored Cape Cod and the neighboring areas, including the site of present-day New Bedford. Gosnold left and settled in the Jamestown Colony of Virginia.

New Bedford is located at 41°39′06″N 70°56′01″W (41.651803, −70.933705). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 24.1 square miles (62.5 km2). Of the total area, 20.0 square miles (51.8 km2) is land, and 4.1 square miles (10.7 km2), or 17.13%, is water. New Bedford is a coastal city, a seaport, bordered on the west by Dartmouth, on the north by Freetown, on the east by Acushnet and Fairhaven, and on the south by Buzzards Bay. From New Bedford's northern border with Freetown to the Buzzards Bay coast at Clark's Point the distance is approximately 14 miles (23 km). Across New Bedford east to west is a distance of about 2 miles (3.2 km). The highest point in the city is an unnamed hill crossed by Interstate 195 and Hathaway Road west of downtown, with an elevation greater than 180 feet (55 m) above sea level.

New Bedford Harbor, a body of water shared with Fairhaven, is actually the estuary of the Acushnet River where it empties into Buzzards Bay. The river empties into the bay beyond Clark's Point, the southernmost point of the city. To the west of Clark's Point is Clark's Cove, which extends landward approximately one and a half mile from the bay. Just south of Palmer's Island, beginning near Fort Phoenix in Fairhaven, lies a two-mile-long hurricane barrier, constructed in the 1960s to protect the inner harbor where the fishing fleet anchors. Along with Palmer's Island, the city also lays claim to Fish Island and Pope's Island. Between these two islands lies one of the three sections, the central section, of the New Bedford-Fairhaven Bridge. The central span, a swing bridge, connects the two islands as well as allowing boats and ships passage to the upper harbor. Two conventional bridges connect each of the islands to the nearest mainland, Fish Island to New Bedford and Pope's Island to Fairhaven. In addition to the harbor, there are several small brooks and ponds within the city limits.

Famous Peoples From New Bedford Massachusetts

Albert Bierstadt

(January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was not the first artist to record the sites, but he was the foremost painter of them for the remainder of the 19th century.

Bierstadt was born in Prussia, but his family moved to the United States when he was one year old. He returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. He became part of the second generation of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along the Hudson River. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. Bierstadt was an important interpreter of the western landscape, and he is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School.

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