Fairhaven, Massachusetts Fairhaven, Massachusetts Fairhaven Town Hall Fairhaven Town Hall Official seal of Fairhaven, Massachusetts Fairhaven is a town in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States.
The town shares a harbor with the town/city of New Bedford, a place well known for its whaling and fishing heritage; consequently, Fairhaven's history, economy, and culture are closely aligned with those of its larger neighbor.
The populace of Fairhaven was 15,873 at the time of the 2010 census. Fairhaven was first settled in 1659 as "Cushnea", the easternmost part of the town of Dartmouth.
This new town encompassed areas that are the present-day suburbs of Fairhaven, Acushnet, and New Bedford itself.
Fairhaven eventually separated from New Bedford, and it was officially incorporated in 1812.
At that time, Fairhaven encompassed all of the territory on the east bank of the Acushnet River.
The northern portion of Fairhaven, upriver from Buzzards Bay, formed another autonomous town, called Acushnet, in 1860.
Fort Phoenix (now the Fort Phoenix State Reservation) is positioned in Fairhaven at the mouth of the Acushnet River, and it served, amid colonial and revolutionary times, as the major defense against seaborne attacks on New Bedford harbor.
Under the command of Nathaniel Pope and Daniel Egery, a group of 25 Fairhaven minutemen (including Noah Stoddard) aboard the sloop Success retrieved two vessels previously captured by a British warship in Buzzards Bay.
They burned ships and warehouses in New Bedford, skirmished at the Head-of-the-River bridge (approximately where the Main Street bridge in Acushnet is presently situated), and marched through Fairhaven to Sconticut Neck, burning homes along the way.
An attack on Fairhaven village itself was repelled by militia under the command of Major Israel Fearing, who had marched from Wareham, some 15 miles (24 km) away, with additional militiamen.
The fort was decommissioned in 1876, and in 1926 the site was donated to the town by Cara Rogers Broughton (a daughter of Henry Huttleston Rogers).
The famous whaling port of New Bedford is positioned athwart the Acushnet River from Fairhaven.
Fairhaven was also a whaling port; in fact, in the year 1838, Fairhaven was the second-largest whaling port in the United States, with 24 vessels sailing for the whaling grounds.
The author of Moby-Dick, Herman Melville, departed from the port of Fairhaven aboard the whaleship Acushnet in 1841.
However, once New Bedford's predominance in the whaling trade became apparent, Fairhaven's economy evolved into one that supplemented the New Bedford economy clean water competing directly with it.
Fairhaven became a town of shipwrights, ship chandlers, ropemakers, coopers, and sailmakers.
Among Fairhaven's natives was Henry Huttleston Rogers (1840 1909), who was a businessman and philanthropist.
Rogers and his wife, ford Rogers, another Fairhaven native (who was the daughter of the whaling captain ford), donated many improve improvements in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century, including a grammar school, an extraordinarily luxurious high school, the Town Hall, the George H.
Fairhaven's great benefactor, Henry H.
Washington, Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller, and Mark Twain, all of whom came to visit Rogers in Fairhaven, sometimes for protracted periods.
On 22 February 1894, the third of Rogers's great bequests to his hometown, the Fairhaven Town Hall (pictured above), was dedicated.
Earlier, in 1885, Rogers had assembled a huge and undivided (for the times) elementary school and, in 1893, a memorial to his beloved daughter, Millicent, in the form of an Italian-Renaissance palazzo that serves as the town's no-charge enhance library to this day.
When the Fairhaven Town Hall, t of Abbie Palmer (Gifford) Rogers, was dedicated, Mark Twain bringed a humorous speech to mark the occasion.
According to the United States Enumeration Bureau, the town has a total region of 14.1 square miles (37 km2), of which 12.4 square miles (32 km2) is territory and 1.7 square miles (4.4 km2), or 12.06%, is water.
The town is the southeastern corner of Bristol County, and contains the easternmost point of the county, on West Island.
Fairhaven is approximately 54 miles (87 km) south of Boston, 21 miles (34 km) by territory west of Cape Cod, and 32 miles (51 km) southeast of Providence, Rhode Island.
The town is positioned on Buzzards Bay, on the easterly bank of the Acushnet River at its mouth.
Fairhaven's localities include Fairhaven Center, North Fairhaven, East Fairhaven, Oxford, Poverty Point, Nasketucket, Sconticut Neck, and Winsegansett Heights.
Most of the town's populace lies either in the west side of town, along Sconticut Neck or in the village of East Fairhaven, with the northeast quarter of the town's territory sparsely populated.
Cushman Park, as well as having tennis courts and ballfields and a bandstand, is the locale of Fairhaven High School's running track.
There are a several small bathing beaches, the biggest being the Fort Phoenix State Reservation, a south-facing beach to the east of the fort and the New Bedford Harbor Hurricane Barrier.
Interstate 195 travels on an east-west path through town, crossing the Acushnet River at the point where it begins to broaden as it approaches New Bedford Harbor.
Route 6, which enters the town on a bridge between the mainland and Pope's Island, which is connected to the rest of New Bedford by the New Bedford Fairhaven Bridge, a swing-span truss bridge over one hundred years old.
The town's retail center is positioned at this intersection, and includes a several stores, markets, and restaurants, and is the chief retail center for neighboring Acushnet and Mattapoisett as well.
SRTA provides bus service between Fairhaven and New Bedford, as well as two short shuttle routes between the town and Acushnet and Mattapoisett.
New Bedford also is the locale of the nearest airport to Fairhaven, the New Bedford Regional Airport.
In the town, the populace was spread out with 21.7% under the age of 18, 6.6% from 18 to 24, 27.9% from 25 to 44, 24.3% from 45 to 64, and 19.5% who were 65 years of age or older.
Fairhaven is the home of the Acushnet Company, a world-renowned manufacturer of golf equipment.
Fairhaven is positioned in the 10th Bristol state representative district, which includes all of Fairhaven, Marion, Mattapoisett, and Rochester, as well as a portion of Middleborough.
The town is represented in the state senate in the 2nd Bristol-Plymouth district, which includes the town/city of New Bedford and the suburbs of Acushnet, Dartmouth, Fairhaven, and Mattapoisett.
On the nationwide level, Fairhaven is a part of Massachusetts's 9th congressional district, and is presently represented by William R.
Fairhaven is governed by a representative town meeting, run by a board of selectmen and a town administrator.
The town has one library (the Millicent Library), two fire stations (the Central and East Fairhaven stations), a central police department, and one postal service, positioned behind the library.
The Fairhaven police department is positioned on Byrant Lane, a kilometre east of the center of town.
Fairhaven High School Fairhaven has its own school department, with two elementary schools; East Fairhaven, and Leroy L.
Wood School), one middle school (Elizabeth Hastings Middle School), and Fairhaven High School, which also accommodates some high school students from neighboring Acushnet.
Fairhaven High School, donated by Rogers in 1906, is the most recognizable landmark in the town, given its prominent locale on Route 6 (Huttleston Avenue) and its impressive appearance.
In addition to the enhance school, high school students may choose to attend either Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational-Technical High School ("Voc-Tech") or Bristol County Agricultural High School ("Bristol Aggie"), no-charge of charge.
The town is also home to Saint Joseph's School, a Roman Catholic parochial school which provides an education to kindergarteners through eighth-graders.
A Massachusetts native, he taught school in Fairhaven as a young man.
Christopher Reeve (1952 2004), of Superman fame, kept a sailboat, the 40-foot (12 m) sloop-rigged Chandelle, at a Fairhaven shipyard and sometimes flew into New Bedford Regional Airport to pick it up or to stay in town amid a stopover en route to Martha's Vineyard.
Frances Ford Seymour (1908 1950), wife of actor Henry Fonda and mother of actress Jane Fonda and actor Peter Fonda; lived in Fairhaven for a several years with family members and attended Fairhaven High School The Spray originally belonged to Captain Eben Pierce of Fairhaven, a whaling captain, who gave the derelict boat, slowly deteriorating in a ship cradle in a meadow on Fairhaven's Poverty Point, to his friend, Captain Slocum.
Today, the student journal at Fairhaven High School is called "The Spray".
"Profile of General Population and Housing Characteristics: 2010 Demographic Profile Data (DP-1): Fairhaven town, Massachusetts".
"1990 Enumeration of Population, General Population Characteristics: Massachusetts" (PDF).
"1980 Enumeration of the Population, Number of Inhabitants: Massachusetts" (PDF).
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fairhaven, Massachusetts.
Town of Fairhaven official website
Categories:
Fairhaven, Massachusetts - Populated coastal places in Massachusetts - Towns in Bristol County, Massachusetts - Providence urbane region - Towns in Massachusetts - Populated places established in 1659 - 1659 establishments in Massachusetts
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