![]() It was burned in the great fire of July 1843. That society later sold it to the city, which made a schoolhouse of it. Some years later, they sold it to the Unitarian Society. Their first meeting house was dedicated in 1823. The First Congregational Church in Fall River was organized in 1816. (His grandfather, Richard (Sr.) (b.1722 d.1795) had been kidnapped by the British in May 1778, according to "Reminiscences of Colonel Joseph Durfee," who was then a Captain of the local Freetown Militia.) The other notable family names included Durfee, Buffington, Davol and Cook. The early town consisted of about two dozen families, including Richard Borden and his father Thomas. The name "Troy" was used for 30 years and was officially changed to the separated "Fall River" on February 12, 1834. A year later, on June 1, 1804, Fallriver changed its name to "Troy". On Febru"Fallriver", Massachusetts was incorporated as a town. ![]() Today, Lafayette Park in the city's East End is named for the French war hero. The 1750s-vintage house is now located at 94 Cherry Street in Fall River, and is open to the public for tours. Later in 1788 during the Revolutionary War, the area was visited by the Marquis de Lafayette, the famed French war hero who was a guest of Joseph Durfee's father Thomas Durfee. The British suffered two casualties as a result of the light fighting. The Freetown minutemen were aided by a colonist militia from the Tiverton outpost led by Captain Joseph Durfee, a war veteran recently returned from a battle at White Plains and son of Thomas Durfee Esq. The prisoner was eventually released after several days, and the British retreated from Freetown altogether. Several British soldiers disembarked to lay siege on the village, burning the house, gristmill and sawmill of Thomas Borden, and taking his aged father, Richard, prisoner, burning his house as well. Spotted by a sentinel, the ship was fired upon by several local minutemen, their gunfire returned by cannon fire. On May 25, 1778, during the American Revolutionary War, the Battle of Freetown was fought when about 150 English soldiers, under the command of Major Ayers, sailed up Mount Hope Bay in the night and landed near the mouth of the Quequechan River. The oldest remaining house in Fall River, located on French Street, was built in 1750. During this time, settlement also occurred in the northern part of modern-day Fall River, along what is now North Main Street. Steven Borden operated a gristmill and sawmill on the north bank of the river. īy the mid-18th century, Thomas Borden (son of Richard) operated a sawmill and a gristmill on the south bank of the Quequechan River, while Joseph Borden ran a fulling mill further upstream. The reservation fell apart in the early 20th century. Later the reservation was shifted to the eastern shore of Watauppa Pond. Native settlement during this time was confined to a reservation near what is now Notre Dame Cemetery. (This transaction became extremely valuable 100 years later, helping to establish the Borden family as the leaders in the development of Fall River's textile industry.) In 1714, Church sold his land, including the water rights, to Richard Borden of Tiverton and his brother Joseph. In 1703, Benjamin Church, a prominent veteran of King Philip's War, established a sawmill, a gristmill and a fulling mill on the Quequechan River. The state boundary was placed approximately at what is now Columbia Street. In 1746, in the settlement of a long colonial boundary dispute between Rhode Island and Massachusetts, Tiverton was annexed to Rhode Island, along with Little Compton and what is now Bristol County, Rhode Island. The southern part of what is now Fall River was incorporated as the town of Tiverton, as part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1694, a few years after the merger with the Plymouth Colony. In 1683 Freetown was incorporated as a town within the colony. In 1653, Freetown, Massachusetts was settled at Assonet Bay by members of the Plymouth Colony, as part of Freeman's Purchase, which included the northern part of what is now Fall River. Quequechan is a Wampanoag word believed to mean "Falling River" or "Leaping/Falling Waters." The "falling" river that the name Fall River refers to is the Quequechan River (pronounced "Quick-a-shan" by locals). The diagonal line represents the border between Massachusetts and Rhode IslandĪt the time of the establishment of the Plymouth Colony in 1620, the area that later became the city of Fall River was inhabited by the Pokanoket Wampanoag tribe, headquartered at Mount Hope in what is now Bristol, Rhode Island.
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