New Bedford, MA news and local guide

In 1652 English colonists bought Old Dartmouth, 115,000 acres now divided among Dartmouth, Acushnet, New Bedford, Fairhaven and Westport, in an agreement with the Wampanoag sachem Ousamequin, or Massasoit, and his son Wamsutta, signed for the English by John Winslow, William Bradford, Myles Standish, Thomas Southworth and John Cooke. The English considered themselves full owners, but the Wampanoag have disputed that, since owning land, as opposed to rights to hunt, fish and farm it, was foreign to them. Quakers, persecuted in the Puritan colonies, became a majority in Old Dartmouth by 1691, and in 1699 they built their first meeting house where the Apponegansett Meeting House stands. The region was long a scattering of farms and small villages living by farming and fishing. The settlement that became the city was founded by English Quakers in the late 17th century, and New Bedford was incorporated as a town in 1787. In the first half of the 19th century it was one of the world's most important whaling ports, and at its height it was the wealthiest city in North America per person. It was a setting of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. Sources Wikipedia: New Bedford, Massachusetts