Dighton, Massachusetts
A Short History of Dighton
From a corner of old Taunton called the South Purchase, to a river port that shipped fish and lumber to the West Indies, to a town whose voters still gather to protect the same river their captains once sailed.
The Taunton South Purchase
Dighton began as part of Taunton. The land was known as the Taunton South Purchase, and in 1672 it was deeded as a separate town to a company of Taunton men. For its first years the settlers were mostly farmers, raising animals and growing crops to feed their families or to trade. The Taunton River ran through everything that came next.
1712, and the Name Dighton
On May 20, 1712, the South Purchase was incorporated as a town and named Dighton, in honor of Frances Dighton, the wife of Richard Williams. The town was larger then than it is now. In 1799 the land across the Taunton River, including Assonet Neck, was annexed by the neighboring town of Berkley, which is why Dighton today sits entirely on the river’s west bank.
A River Port
Shipbuilding started in the South Purchase as early as 1693, while it was still part of Taunton, and it flourished in the early 1700s. Ships built in Dighton sailed to the West Indies, South America and Europe with cured fish, lumber, grain and barrel staves, and came back with rum, molasses, salt and merchandise. In 1789 Dighton was made a port of entry. Because larger ships could not navigate the Taunton River above the town, Dighton became the natural distributing point for central and southern New England, and goods were carried overland from there by horse and oxen teams.
Mills, Silk, and Strawberries
As the port trade faded, Dighton turned to manufacturing. Several cotton mills ran in the early 1800s, the largest being the Mt. Hope Cotton Company. About 1830 a silk industry began when Sarah Hart of Hunter’s Hill started raising silkworms and taught her neighbors the craft. In the 1860s strawberry growing became a lucrative business for local farmers, and greenhouses filled the town around the turn of the century. The old Mt. Hope Finishing Company plant became the Raytheon Company in 1958, and later housed a range of manufacturers and warehouses.
The Wild and Scenic River
The Taunton River still defines the town, and in the twenty-first century Dighton helped decide its future. Before Congress acted, the town meetings and city council of the ten communities along the river each voted to support federal protection for it, and Dighton’s Town Meeting was one of those rooms. In March 2009 Congress added about 40 miles of the Taunton to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. It is the same form of meeting, open to every registered voter, that has run the town since 1712, and it is a reminder that the biggest decisions here are still made by residents raising their hands.
Sources: Town of Dighton, official History page (dighton-ma.gov/184/History); National Park Service, Taunton Wild and Scenic River; U.S. Census Bureau.
MassCivics last checked this page on October 15, 2026.
Sources
- Town records: Town of Dighton, History, as of October 2026.
- Federal government: National Park Service, Taunton Wild and Scenic River, as of March 30, 2009.