A Walking Tour of New Bedford, Massachusetts
The town of Dartmouth was formed from so-called “common land” on June 8, 1664, and included
the territory called Acushena, Ponagansett and Coakset. The bounds of the town were defined June
3, 1668. From this territory New Bedford was set off February 23, 1787. Therefore, New Bedford was
founded as a town in 1787 and incorporated as a city in 1847.
First mayor Abraham Howland and the new city fathers were predominately Quakers. Followers of the
religious teachings of Englishman, George Fox, the Quakers referred to themselves as the “Society of
Friends” and “Children of the Light.” Their spiritual mission in life was to spread (diffuse) the “Inner
Light of Christ” to all they encountered. So here they were, the Children of the Light, employed in the
lighting industry, supplying whale oil to the entire world for lighting.
The town had grown since the economically difficult days of the American Revolution a decade earlier.
With its well-protected deep harbor, by 1823 New Bedford had surpassed Nantucket in the number of
whaling ships leaving its harbor each year and by 1840, with the arrival of the railroad and easier access
to markets in New York and Boston, the port was the whaling capital of the world. New Bedford was
for a time “the richest city in the world.”
This walking tour will begin at the Visitor Center for the New Bedford Whaling National Historical
Park, just a couple of blocks from the waterfront of the “city that lit the world”...
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