Loading…
A timeline built only from sourced facts. Each entry names its sources; where accounts disagree, the entry says so. It will grow as the archives of the Dartmouth Historical & Arts Society, the town, and UMass Dartmouth are worked through.
Bartholomew Gosnold founds a short-lived English post on Cuttyhunk Island, within sight of what becomes Dartmouth's shore. It is abandoned the same year.
Sources: Old Dartmouth — Wikipedia
On March 7, 1652, English colonists acquire roughly 115,000 acres — today's Dartmouth, Westport, New Bedford, Fairhaven and Acushnet — from the Wampanoag. The Wampanoag understanding of the transaction differed fundamentally from the English one, and the purchase remains disputed. Settlement begins around November.
Sources: Dartmouth, Massachusetts — Wikipedia; Old Dartmouth — Wikipedia
Old Dartmouth is officially incorporated as a town on June 8, 1664. The town marked its 350th anniversary in 2014.
Sources: Dartmouth, Massachusetts — Wikipedia
Disputes over the purchase terms feed into King Philip's War. Wampanoag fighters, allied with the Narragansett and Nipmuc, raid Old Dartmouth; settlers shelter in garrison houses including John Cooke's in present-day Fairhaven.
Sources: Dartmouth, Massachusetts — Wikipedia; Old Dartmouth — Wikipedia
The Society of Friends, long a majority in the town, builds its first meeting house in Old Dartmouth. The Apponegansett Meeting House still stands and is on the National Register.
Sources: Old Dartmouth — Wikipedia; Dartmouth, Massachusetts — Wikipedia
Tiverton and Little Compton separate from Old Dartmouth; both are later annexed to Rhode Island.
Sources: Old Dartmouth — Wikipedia
Old Dartmouth loses most of its territory when Westport and New Bedford (then including Fairhaven and Acushnet) become separate towns, leaving Dartmouth with roughly its modern borders.
Sources: Old Dartmouth — Wikipedia
The Akin House goes up on Potters Hill in what is now South Dartmouth; it survives as one of the town's oldest houses.
Sources: Dartmouth, Massachusetts — Wikipedia
The Lincoln Park amusement park opens on State Road in North Dartmouth, a regional destination for most of the next century.
Sources: Dartmouth, Massachusetts — Wikipedia
Two technical institutes in Fall River and New Bedford merge; the new campus, designed by Paul Rudolph, rises southwest of Smith Mills. Known as Southeastern Massachusetts University from 1969, it joins the UMass system in 1991.
Sources: Dartmouth, Massachusetts — Wikipedia
The current Dartmouth High School building opens.
Sources: Dartmouth, Massachusetts — Wikipedia
Current entries were seeded from Wikipedia as a pointer and will be re-verified against primary sources (town records, the Old Dartmouth Historical Society collections, Massachusetts archives) before the timeline is marked complete. Photographs will be added only where the rights holder allows it.
