View the New Bedford HandbookNew Bedford, Massachusetts
A Short History of New Bedford
From the fishing grounds of the Wampanoag to the whaling capital of the world, and from the city that lit the world to today’s working seaport and immigrant gateway.
Before the City
Long before the city existed, the shores of the Acushnet River were home to the Wampanoag people, who fished the river and Buzzards Bay. English settlers arrived in the seventeenth century, and the village that became New Bedford was set off from the town of Dartmouth in 1787, taking its name from the Russell family, Dukes of Bedford.
The Whaling Capital of the World
By the early nineteenth century New Bedford had become the center of the global whaling industry. Its ships ranged across the Pacific in search of whale oil, which lit the lamps of America and Europe, and for a time the city was among the wealthiest per person in the world. That era is preserved today in the cobblestone streets of the historic district, the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and Seamen’s Bethel, the chapel made famous in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
Freedom and Abolition
New Bedford was also a center of the abolitionist movement and a stop on the Underground Railroad. Frederick Douglass came here after escaping slavery in 1838, found work on the docks, and began his career as an orator. The city’s Quaker community and free Black residents made it a comparatively safe harbor for people seeking freedom.
Textiles and Immigration
As whaling declined in the later nineteenth century, New Bedford reinvented itself as a textile-manufacturing center, drawing immigrants from Portugal, the Azores, Cape Verde, Poland, French Canada, and beyond. Their churches, festivals, and food still define the city’s neighborhoods, and New Bedford remains home to one of the largest Portuguese-speaking communities in the United States.
The Working Port Today
The textile mills moved south in the twentieth century, but the harbor endured. For years New Bedford has ranked as the highest-value fishing port in the United States, driven by its scallop fleet, and it is now a hub for the emerging offshore wind industry. A working seaport, an arts and history downtown, and a deeply rooted immigrant culture make New Bedford one of the most distinctive cities in New England.
Sources: City of New Bedford; New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park (NPS); U.S. Census Bureau.