Taunton, Massachusetts Taunton, Massachusetts War Memorials on Taunton Green War Memorials on Taunton Green Flag of Taunton, Massachusetts Flag Official seal of Taunton, Massachusetts Nickname(s): The Silver City, The Christmas City Taunton, Massachusetts is positioned in the US Taunton, Massachusetts - Taunton, Massachusetts Taunton is a town/city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States, positioned approximately 40 miles (64 km) south of Boston, 18 miles (29 km) east of Providence, 10 miles (16 km) north of Fall River, 20 miles (32 km) north of New Bedford, and 25 miles (40 km) west of Plymouth.
Taunton is situated on the Taunton River which winds its way through the town/city on its way to Mount Hope Bay, 10 miles (16 km) to the south.
Founded in 1637 by members of the Plymouth Colony, Taunton is one of the earliest suburbs in the United States.
Taunton is also known as the "Silver City", as it was an historic center of the silver trade beginning in the 19th century when companies such as Reed & Barton, F.
Since December 1914, the town/city of Taunton has provided a large annual light display each December on Taunton Green, giving it the additional nickname of "Christmas City".
The initial boundaries of Taunton encompassed the territory now occupied by many encircling towns, including Norton, Easton, Mansfield, Dighton, Raynham, Berkley, and Lakeville.
Taunton was established by pioneer from England and officially incorporated as a town on September 3, 1639.
Most of the town's pioneer were originally from Taunton in Somerset, England, which led early pioneer to name the settlement after that town.
And owning it a great mercy of God to bring us to this place, and settling of us, on lands of our own bought with our cash in peace, in the midst of the heathen, for a possession for ourselves and for our posterity after us." Prior to 1640, the Taunton region was called Cohannet, Tetiquet or Titiquet.
The English framers of Taunton purchased the territory from the Nemasket Indians in 1637 as part of the Tetiquet Purchase and the remaining native families were relocated to the praying town of Ponkapoag in current day Canton, MA. A central figure among the framers was Elizabeth Poole who is believed to have been the first woman to found a settlement in the Americas and, contrary to small-town folklore, did not take part in the town purchase but was among its greatest beneficiaries and played a momentous part in the beginning of its church. Described as "the foundress of Taunton" and its matriarch, Poole "was accorded equality of rights, whether in the purchase of lands, in the sharing of iron works holdings," having been a financier of the settlement's first dam and foundry assembled for the manufacture of bar iron. Plymouth Colony was formally divided into counties on June 2, 1685, with Taunton becoming the shire town of Bristol County.
The Taunton region has been the site of skirmishes and battles amid various conflicts, including King Philip's War and the American Revolution.
Taunton was re-incorporated as a town/city on May 11, 1864.
It was the first of many iron industries in Taunton.
During the 19th century, Taunton became known as the "Silver City", as it was home to many silversmithing operations, including Reed & Barton, F.B.
In the 19th century, Taunton was also the center of an meaningful iron-making industry, utilizing much bog iron from the various swamps in the encircling area.
The iron trade in Taunton produced a range of goods including stoves (Weir Stove Company/Glenwood), tacks (Field Tack Company) and machinery.
The Taunton Locomotive Works (begun in 1846) also directed in the town/city during this time.
Taunton was also home to a several textile mills (Whittenton Mills) and other industries, such as felt (Bacon Felt) and brick making.
During the 19th century, Taunton was a primary shipping point for grain from the inland non-urban farm areas of Massachusetts to the rest of the country via Weir Village and the Taunton River.
With the advent of the barns , Taunton would also turn into an meaningful transportation core due to its central location.
The town/city formed the Taunton Municipal Light Plant (TMLP) in 1897, when it decided to purchase the floundering Taunton Electric Lighting Company, making it a publicly owned electric utility.
Today, TMLP provides electric service to 34,000 customers in Taunton, Berkley, Raynham, and sections of Dighton, Lakeville and Bridgewater.
The Myles Standish Industrial Park in Taunton's north end is presently one of the biggest in New England. The National Weather Service operates a county-wide weather forecast office that serves much of Massachusetts, all of Rhode Island, and most of northern Connecticut there.
In 2010, the historic Taunton City Hall was severely damaged in an arson fire.
In 2012 Taunton became the target locale for a Wampanoag casino complex which was embroiled in conflict by competing county-wide bands of the Wampanoag over territory claims. The proposed casino resort complex locale is adjoining to a small-town elementary school and the county-wide technical high school, generating protests by parent and teacher groups. On June 10, 2012, the City of Taunton dedicated the Taunton Global War on Terrorism War Memorial on Church Green. Municipalities (in grey) that were once part of Taunton According to the United States Enumeration Bureau, the town/city has a total region of 48.4 square miles (125.4 km2), of which 46.4 square miles (120.1 km2) is territory and 1.7 square miles (4.4 km2), or 3.53%, is water. It is the third-largest town/city by region in Massachusetts, after Boston and Barnstable.
Taunton has one primary river, the Taunton River, along with its tributaries including the Mill River and the Three Mile River.
See also: National Register of Historic Places listings in Taunton, Massachusetts Taunton Green Historic District (50 acres, 22 buildings, 3 objects) Taunton State Hospital Historic District, also known as the Taunton Lunatic Asylum (1250 acres (5.1 km2), 38 buildings, 8 structures) Due to the annexation of suburbs from the initial town of Taunton, the town/city now is irregularly shaped, with it (along with neighboring Raynham) roughly making a triangle.
City neighborhoods include the Bird Lanes, Clearview Estates, East Taunton, Elliot's Corner, Herring Run Estates, Linden Estates, Matthews Landing, North Taunton, Oakland, Pine Crest Estates, Pine Hill Estates, Wades Corner, Weir Village, Westville, Whittenton, Whittenton Junction, Britannia Village (Britanniaville), Willis Lake Village and Woodward Estates.
Taunton is also home to almost the entirety of Massasoit State Park in East Taunton, and a large portion of the Hockomock Swamp Wildlife Management Area in North Taunton.
The town/city of Taunton is very multi-cultural with citizens s of different origins living inside the city.
Most of Taunton's immigration occurred near the turn of the 1900s when immigrants would work in the city's mills.
Taunton also has a School Committee and many boards and commissions.
As the seat of Bristol County, Taunton is home to the county's several administrative offices and a several of its courthouses, which includes one that is presently under construction, including the Bristol County Superior Courthouse.
The Massachusetts State Police's Troop D (Southeast District), 4th Barracks, patrols Taunton and is positioned in Middleborough.
Taunton is a part of three separate state representative districts: Third Bristol (entirely positioned in Taunton), Fifth Bristol (which includes Dighton, Somerset and part of Swansea), and 12th Bristol (including all or parts of Freetown, Lakeville, Middleborough and New Bedford).
Robert Treat Paine, a long-time Taunton resident, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the first Attorney-General of Massachusetts.
Part of King Philip's War was fought inside Taunton's limits.
Former president Bill Clinton rallied at Taunton High School.
The town/city of Taunton has 133 experienced firefighters on the Taunton Fire Department (TFD).
The TFD presently operates out of five fire stations, positioned throughout the city, and operates a fire apparatus fleet of six engines, three ladders, one rescue unit, two brush units, one dive rescue unit, two fireboats, and a several other special, support, and reserve units.
Below is a complete listing of all fire station locations and apparatus in the town/city of Taunton.
Fire Headquarters Fire Station # 1 Engine 1 Snorkel Rescue 1, Forestry 2, Fireboat 2 Car 1 (Chief of Department), Car 2 (Deputy Chief) 50 School St.
Taunton's economy has historically been based on silversmithing and ship assembly.
Silver City Galleria is a large shopping mall in Taunton catering to the small-town town/city and to the neighboring suburbs and metros/cities of Raynham, Berkley, Rehoboth, Dighton, New Bedford and Norton.
Taunton has nine enhance elementary schools and three enhance middle schools. East Taunton Elementary School Taunton has two enhance high schools: Taunton High School, which homes grades 9 12 as well as all of the city's enhance 8th undertaking students, and Bristol-Plymouth Regional Technical School.
Taunton also has one Catholic high school, Coyle and Cassidy High School Recently closed former schools in Taunton include: Taunton is home to a satellite ground of Bay State College at 101 Industrial Park Road serving Associate and bachelor's degrees to working professionals and longterm position changers in the fields of company and management, criminal justice and medical assisting.
It is also home to a satellite ground of Bristol Community College, which meets at the Silvercity Galleria and (formerly) Taunton Catholic Middle School.
In addition, the town/city homes longterm position schools such as the Rob - Roy Academy beauty school.
Taunton Green Bristol County Superior Courthouse, Taunton The Taunton Green is the city's central square.
Some say it was also the site of the historic "Liberty & Union"/"Taunton" flag raising in 1774 by the Sons of Liberty, before to the American Revolution. Since the early 20th century, Taunton Green has temporarily been transformed amid the winter holiday season into a grand display of holiday lights, scenes, and extravagant affairs.
"The Green" continues to furnish a centralized locale for citywide Christmas activities, other holidays, affairs, and parades for the people of Taunton.
A fountain is positioned at the center of the Taunton Green.
The town/city is served by a central enhance library, the Taunton Public Library, which opened in 1903 and has undergone a several expansions and renovations since that time.
The town/city is home to two state parks directed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts / Department of Conservation and Recreation, Massasoit State Park in East Taunton and Watson Pond State Park in the north part of the city.
The First Parish Church, now a Unitarian Universalist church, positioned at Church Green at the east end of downtown, was established in 1637, before the Town of Taunton was even established.
The town/city of Taunton has a wide array of architecture ranging from the colonial reconstructionto undivided times.
Other momentous buildings in the town/city include some fine contemporary churches, including the First Parish Church (1830), the Pilgrim Congregational Church (1851) and St.
Downtown Taunton has a number of historic commercial blocks along Main Street, Taunton Green and Broadway, assembled amid the reconstructionfrom about 1840 to 1920.
Many large homes assembled by the wealthy industrialists and merchants of the late 19th and early 20th century line Route 44 both east (Dean Street) and west (Winthrop Street) of the town/city center, while a majority of the town/city is occupied by more modest wood-framed single and multi-family homes, many over 100 years old.
The historic Taunton City Hall is positioned adjoining to Church Green.
In March 2008, Hollywood director Martin Scorsese filmed a portion of the film Shutter Island starring Leonardo Di - Caprio in Taunton on locale at the Whittenton Mills Complex. Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis, was partly filmed in the city, at the old Paul Dever school. Taunton has small-town Public, educational, and government access (PEG) cable TV channels which include the Public-access tv Taunton Community Access and Media, Inc.
(Comcast Channel 15; Verizon 22), Educational tv Taunton Educational Network (Comcast Channel 9; Verizon 23) which is run by the Taunton High School TV Studio and Government-access tv Taunton Municipal Network (Comcast Channel 17; Verizon 24).
Comcast's Taunton fitness carries all Providence and Boston stations as well and both markets are available over-the-air.
The two airways broadcasts based in Taunton are WVBF 1530 AM (licensed to close-by Middleborough Center), which features small-town programming until noon followed by syndicated feed from the Reading for the Blind Network, and WSNE-FM 93.3, which primarily serves the Providence radio market and has its studios in the town/city of Providence.
From 1949 until 2007, Taunton was also served by small-town airways broadcast WPEP-AM 1570.
Taunton has four art arcades: Taunton Art Association (John Baradas Gallery), Hughes/Donahue Gallery, Art Euphoric, and the Trescott Street Gallery.
Hughes/Donahue Gallery established in 2007, a small-town improve loggia serving small-town Taunton artists, encircling areas of Southeastern Massachusetts and including the metros/cities of Providence, and Washington DC.
Taunton is served by a several publications including the Silver City Bulletin, Brockton Enterprise, and the Taunton Daily Gazette.
The Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant (TMLP), Taunton's electric company, is also an Internet service provider for the town/city and its encircling towns.
Taunton is home to the Morton Hospital and Medical Center, positioned on Washington Street, just north of the town/city center.
Taunton State Hospital is a psychiatric hospital positioned on Hodges Avenue.
Electricity is provided to inhabitants by the Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant (TMLP), positioned in the south end.
The town/city has a municipal water system, with a treatment plant and waterworks in close-by Lakeville, as well as a enhance sewage fitness with a treatment plant on West Water Street in the south end of the city, discharging into the Taunton River.
The Taunton Railway began in 1838 as the chief rail transit system, both industrialized and passenger, connecting Taunton with points south, east, north, and west, including New Bedford and Cape Cod, Fall River and Newport, Somerset and Providence, Attleboro and Providence, Mansfield and Boston, Stoughton and Boston, Raynham Middleborough and Wareham as time went on.
Taunton is the central highway core of southeastern Massachusetts.
US 44, MA 138, and MA 140 intersect at Taunton Green, the square at Taunton's center.
Additionally, MA 24 and MA 140 intersect near East Taunton, and it is at that junction that Route 140 ceases to be a 2-lane divided freeway from the south and becomes a lesser state highway to the north.
Interstate 495 runs through the northern portion of Taunton, unofficially referred to as "North Taunton", and alongside to Myles Standish Industrial Park, Taunton's chief industrial park.
The Greater Attleboro Taunton Regional Transit Authority, or GATRA, provides bus mass transit.
The Boys & Girls Club of Taunton is home to one of the most prosperous inner town/city floor hockey programs in the country, established by long-time principal Dick Faulkner.
Main article: List of citizens from Taunton, Massachusetts Taunton shares a sister town/city status with: United Kingdom Taunton, Somerset, England, United Kingdom Pleasant Cemetery, erected by the ladies of Taunton in 1836, describes her in glowing eulogy as the "Foundress of the Town of Taunton;" but her name nowhere appears as one of the initial purchasers, although that of another lady, 'Widdo Randall,' does; and so far as we can ascertain, the prominent tradition of her purchase of the place with a jack-knife and a peck of beans must be ranked with the legend of Romulus and Remus as the framers of Rome, with that of William Tell as the bringer of Switzerland, or that of Pocahontas as the savior of Captain Smith.
"Geographic Identifiers: 2010 Demographic Profile Data (G001): Taunton city, Massachusetts".
Quarter Millennial Celebration of the City of Taunton, Massachusetts.
Although Elizabeth Poole did not buy 'Taunton,' as the prominent account sometimes has it, but only a small portion of the easterly borders of the then unoccupied territory, it is the brief anecdotal of her coming here that shall always remain like a star in the crown of the beginnings of the city.
"Taunton City Council votes to OK using $53,000 for new City Hall design plan".
Casino big in Taunton spurs tribal turf fight, Boston Globe, April 16, 2012.
Gambling with East Taunton education, parents express concerns over potential casino near schools, Taunton Gazette, April 13, 2012.
"Taunton High District Report Card".
Taunton Public Schools.
Taunton Gazette, March 18, 2010 "Taunton, Massachusetts".
History of Taunton, Massachusetts from Its Settlement to the Present Time by Samuel Hopkins Emery, presented 1893.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Taunton, Massachusetts.
Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Taunton, Massachusetts.
City of Taunton official website Taunton Area Chamber of Commerce Massachusetts Historical Commission Reconnaissance Survey Report on Taunton.
Good Federally funded review of Taunton's history, especially its industrialized history.
Categories:
Taunton, Massachusetts - Cities in Bristol County, Massachusetts - Cities in Massachusetts - County seats in Massachusetts - Early American industrialized centers - Populated places established in 1637 - Providence urbane region - 1637 establishments in Massachusetts
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