Three virtual exhibits are online, courtesy of Jon Alden, vice president of the Westport Historical Scoiety. These are amixture of photos and text about Westport and can be found here: • Community on Camera Exhibition 11-30-2006 • Westport Whaling in...
Bruce White Most accounts of cotton manufacturing in New England describe a progression from the small rural water-powered cotton-spinning operations, through the larger “company town” enterprises that extended the spinning of yarn to the manufacture of cloth, to the fully...
Someone left a clipping from the Personals section of a paper – no doubt a New Bedford one – on a table in the Bell School. When it was left, and why it had remained on that table, is...
There are references to sailing into and out of Westport in several whaling logs. We print here – with a few comments – selections from some of them. We are grateful to Michael Dyer, Librarian of the New Bedford...
We drive them all the time, but rarely give a thought to the roads of Westport. And yet they are of historical interest for a number of reasons. A quick glance at the map on p. 23 of A look...
This Web site now contains a special exhibit of more than 100 photographs and related text. You can reach it any time by clicking on "Westport Memories" in the main menu at the top and bottom of the page. The...
Howe was a friend, confidante and adviser of FDR, and FDR in fact did visit Howe at his summer cottage on Horseneck Beach. Howe was early convinced that Roosevelt would be President one day, hence the salutation. FDR did come...
This poem was written by Charlotte White, half black, half Native American, and was born in 1775. Charlotte White Rd. is named after her. You can see a picture of her in our "Westport Enters its Fifth Century" p. 57....
Did Herman Melville ever visit Westport? We will probably never know, but the following item from The Melville Log (Edited by Jay Leyda, NY:Gordian Press, 1969) suggests that he may have: “NEW YORK Late April? M writes to Henry Willcox...
Wednesday noon, Sept. 21, 1938, I lunched at my father’s house on Rock Street in Fall River. The wind was then blowing approximately South by East with noticeable velocity, roaring through the trees in the city, and small branches were falling. We discussed at luncheon the speed of the wind, estimating it to be between thirty and forty miles per hour at about one o’clock. We also speculated whether this could be the West Indies Hurricane whose approach along the Atlantic Coast we had watched through newspaper reports for several days.
There are a number of poems (or parts of poems) in the logs of the ship Harbinger, and we thought it might be a good idea to print them here. The final one, as you will observe, is incomplete:...
The April 10, 2003 issue of Shorelines contains two articles on alewives. These small fish typically return to Westport in the Spring, and are of interest to humans (for bait) and birds (for food). Because of pollution in the rivers...
It is always well to know where you are. I learned this some seventeen years ago when I decided at last to look for a vacation or summer house. My mother’s family stemmed from John Dyer Rd. in Adamsville, RI,...