Recognizing that diversity is our strength, Mary Santos Barros (1923-2018) was a strong and tireless advocate for equal education for all, Cape Verdean advancement, and many other causes in New Bedford. She demonstrated how others can build an inclusive community that treats all people with respect and dignity.

Mary’s concern for her own children and the children of others informed her active advocacy through Parent Teacher Associations (PTA)—coalitions of parents and teachers that advocate for public education and serve as a resource for community families. During the mid-20th century, many women used PTAs to organize on their children’s behalf. Mary often served as president of these PTAs. She also served on the executive committee of the Committee of Concerned Parents for New Bedford schools and was instrumental in the building and dedication of the Alfred J. Gomes Elementary School in 1977, named for a local Cape Verdean attorney and leader.

Using her experiences working in the PTA as a launching pad, Mary became more politically involved. Mary recognized that in order to accomplish certain objectives, one has to be active on many levels. Through a grassroots campaign, going door-to-door, to meet and listen to her constituents, she was elected to the New Bedford City Council in 1989 and served two terms as Ward 4 councilor. Upon her election she remarked that she would be “in the City Council for all the people of Ward 4.” Mary, like Rosalind Poll Brooker before her, brought her knowledge of the community to the Council to fight for changes from within City Hall. Her time in political office was marked by her support for affordable housing, drug rehabilitation programs, anti-poverty efforts, and continued educational advocacy through legislation.

She also brought her advocacy to the state level as a social worker for the Massachusetts Department of Social Services and as a member of the Massachusetts Board of Education from 1975-1979. She was recognized “for her distinguished service through the establishment of increased opportunities for the youth and exemplary parent participation.” She was also elected as a city and then a state Committeewoman to the Democratic Party Conventions.

Mary was a strong advocate for all people, particularly people of color, and especially Cape Verdeans. Her own Cape Verdean heritage was important to her and she did much to help Cape Verdeans in New Bedford and the land of her parents. When natural disasters assaulted Cape Verde, Mary, using her organizing skills, worked with others to lobby on state and federal levels to raise funds and send needed supplies to the islands. A believer in political empowerment as well, Mary helped many Cape Verdean immigrants become American citizens and served as a voice for immigrant parents, often taking them to school committee meetings and interpreting for them.

Her legacy is a powerful example that served as a role-model for her own children and all community members, as she spread the knowledge that they can empower themselves and strengthen the community.

Thank you to the family of Mary Santos Barros for their contributions to Mary’s biography and providing photographs. Their stories showcased Mary’s special qualities and tireless efforts on behalf of her family and community.

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When 20,000 textile workers went on strike in the 1928 New Bedford Textile Workers Strike, 18-year-old factory worker Eulalia “Eula” Mendes (1910-2004) became a leader in her mill and community by encouraging Portuguese industrial migrant workers to participate in the strike. Later, she traveled nationwide to support other fights for justice and equality.

Eula left Portugal with her working-class family in 1912 and settled in New Bedford, a textile city with a large Portuguese-speaking community. At the young age of 14, Eula became her family’s primary breadwinner as a bobbin worker in a textile factory. In 1928, when the city’s textile workers went on strike in opposition to a 10% wage cut planned by the factory owners, Eula began attending meetings run by regional and national labor organizers.

She became a leader at her mill and in her community by promoting Portuguese worker participation in the strike. Eula translated the speeches of labor leaders into Portuguese and gave speeches herself. She became an organizer for the communist-influenced Textile Mill Committee (TMC), which demanded a wage increase, a 40-hour workweek, and an end to child labor. Eventually, Eula became a member of the TMC’s executive committee serving in a leadership role as secretary.

The TMC organized thousands of workers into pickets, rallies, and parades that attracted the attention of law enforcement and city officials. The National Guard and local police used force and arrested many strikers, including Eula. She noted that she “was arrested a number of times... We sometimes stayed [in jail] for just a few hours, sometimes overnight or sometimes even days or weeks, but we were usually let out on bail. And a few days later maybe we were arrested again.”

After six months, the strikers accepted a smaller pay cut and returned to work. For Eula, the 1928 strike sparked a life of union organizing. She traveled nationwide with the International Ladies Garment Workers and other unions to support other uprisings in the fight for justice and equality. Eula’s activism continued with her Communist Party affiliation in New Bedford and the region, and she refused to sign a Loyalty Pledge to promise that she was not a Communist.

The strike did not accomplish all the goals the TMC hoped for, but it did change the relationship between textile workers and mill owners in the city and New England for decades to come. After years of being ignored by the established mill craft unions, ethnic communities found a voice through the TMC and developed a new interest in unions, which encouraged them to come together to advocate for greater representation.

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Confectioner and abolitionist Polly Johnson (1784-1871) specialized in sweets and provided safe lodging to freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad at her 21 Seventh Street home in New Bedford. She and her husband Nathan helped several formerly enslaved people on their journeys to freedom, including renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass and his wife Anna. As a businesswoman with confectionery and catering businesses, Polly worked hard so that freedom seekers could find “sweet freedom” in New Bedford.

Polly’s early wages as a domestic worker were likely used toward the purchase of four properties on Seventh and Spring Streets, including her and Nathan’s confectionery and catering business. By 1836, New Bedford’s wealthy families regularly purchased Polly’s confections and cakes for parties and weddings. Her confectionery shop at 23 Seventh Street sold such items as ginger snaps, candy sticks, Jackson Balls, John Brown’s Bullets, and spruce gum. Polly specialized in candy, cakes, and ice cream. In 1844, the abolitionist Caroline Weston, then teaching in New Bedford, tried to persuade her cousin, the antislavery orator Wendell Phillips, to speak in the city by promising that “Polly Johnson shall freeze her best ice & ice her best cakes'' if he came. Ever conscious of social justice, Polly’s confectionery shop sold “free labor candy” made from sugar grown on sugar plantations that employed free workers instead of the enslaved.

In 1849, Nathan left New Bedford for the California Gold Rush leaving the properties, valued at more than half a million dollars today, in Polly’s name. Polly ran the business by herself until her death in 1871. Nathan never returned during those 22 years. Polly used her work ethic and business sense to continue the confectionery, paying off her home’s loan, having an addition made to the home, and furthering her abolitionist efforts. Polly was well-read on the social issues of the time and regularly attended antislavery meetings. She provided safe lodging to several other freedom seekers while Nathan was away. New Bedford was a welcoming place for freedom seekers due in part to its tolerance of diversity and a spirit of equality in its maritime trades. It is estimated that during the 1850s, the population of black freedom seekers in New Bedford ranged from 300 to 700.

Polly was well known not only for her cakes and sweets, but also for the care she and Nathan provided to freedom seekers along the Underground Railroad. People arrived in New Bedford looking for the home of the Johnsons. A passionate abolitionist and a successful businesswoman, Polly helped New Bedford become known as a city of tolerance and diversity. She stands as an inspiration for current generations who seek to affect change for a cause important to them.

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Equality was the vision driving Elizabeth Carter Brooks’ (1867-1951) work as an educator, social activist, and architect. She wove these seemingly separate paths into a long life of advocacy for African Americans of New Bedford and beyond in a time when African Americans faced many obstacles and overt racism in both the South and the North in the United States.

In 1901, Elizabeth became the first African American woman hired as a public-school teacher in New Bedford. She taught at the William H. Taylor School for over 25 years. When she retired the New Bedford’s Superintendent of Schools noted that “her work was characterized by a sympathetic understanding of children...Thousands of children in New Bedford will remember Miss Carter and her kindly influence over them for many years to come.”

As a social activist, Elizabeth organized local, regional, and national groups that supported African American achievement. In 1896, nearly 200 clubs across the country combined to establish the National Association of Colored Women Clubs (NACWC). Elizabeth was elected vice president of NACWC in 1906 and served as the group’s fourth president from 1908-1912. During her administration, Elizabeth set up a scholarship, started a newspaper, and strengthened the NACWC. She was the first Association president to travel across the country meeting with local and regional organizations. African American women’s clubs like the NACWC, and the local chapter of the Martha Briggs Educational Club, are rooted in a long history of activism against racism and sexism including anti-lynching and voting rights campaigns. They promoted education and training as the means to lift up and advance women of color. The NACWC and its affiliated clubs continue the work set out in their original mission.

Elizabeth joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) soon after it was formed and later headed the NAACP’s regional and local New Bedford branches. Elizabeth used her educational expertise and activism to organize the Elizabeth Carter Brooks Jr. Girls Club. Meeting on Friday afternoons, the young women studied African American history, explored current events and advocacy, worked with senior community members, and promoted kindness and good deeds.

As a child, Elizabeth enjoyed cheering up elderly people. She noted how they “all seem to feel that I understand them.” Yet she saw a lack of loving care for the city’s elders. With the endorsement of the Women's Loyal Union, she raised enough money and support in 1897 to create New Bedford's first organized home serving elderly women of color. Eleven years later, she designed the Home for the Aged’s permanent location at 396 Middle Street. A stately establishment, the Home provided a comfortable life for the city’s aged residents until the 1990s.

Through her educational, architectural, and organizing skills, Elizabeth Carter Brooks’ activism enriched the lives of New Bedford’s students, elderly, and people of color. To honor her legacy, the New Bedford Public Schools dedicated a school building in her name. Elizabeth’s activism and accomplishments are still remembered in the city and the country. Her work lives on in the women still fighting for equality today.

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Jennie Horne’s (1920-1998) influential career in social services was fueled by her idealism, her love of people, and a desire to contribute to her community in New Bedford. During a time in which information on how people of color could access social programs was not always available, Jennie worked to make sure it was. She advised families on new initiatives that offered educational and job opportunities for everyone, particularly encouraging women of color to join the workforce. Wherever she went people shared their goals and dreams, and Jennie always responded positively with a smile and an offer of help. She is remembered as an “encourager, a connector, and a helper” who always lent a hand to raise others up.

Jennie started as a secretary in the main office of New Bedford’s ONBOARD (Organized New Bedford Opportunity And Resource Development), an anti-poverty community action project agency. Through ONBOARD, she helped acquire grants for city programs that provided education, employment, and recreation opportunities for minorities and poor people. Jennie then went to the West Central Community Center, eventually serving as its director. There she initiated several programs to aid the disadvantaged.

One of Jennie’s greatest gifts was her knowledge of the people who lived in the West End. She kept mental notes on the talents and needs of the people in her neighborhood. Robert Horne remembers his mother as seeming “to know instinctively who to call on in the West End to ask for assistance and also who in the West End might need the assistance that the [West Central Community Center] could provide.” She knew who had the sewing skills to lead a sewing class or the bookkeeping skills to organize and operate a neighborhood credit union.

Jennie also worked for Model Cities, a federal urban assistance program that—along with ONBOARD—was part of the War on Poverty, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s legislative agenda that sought to attack the root causes of poverty and provide opportunity for all. In 1968, New Bedford was one of 151 cities chosen in the Model Cities project, whose mission was to address the effects of prejudice and neglect on urban communities. While at Model Cities, Jennie was involved in improving public school reorganization, public housing development, and relations between police and the community. Model Cities eventually became the Community Development Block Grant Program. Later, as a member of the Mayor’s Citizen Advisory Committee, Jennie helped to channel federal Community Block Grants during several different mayoral administrations.

With boundless energy, Jennie served on several PTAs, nonprofit boards, and women’s organizations, including as president of the Martha Briggs Educational Club. Founded in 1920 by women of color, today the Martha Briggs Educational Club provides scholarships to local minority high school students. In 1939, the Club purchased the Sgt. William H. Carney House at 128 Mill Street where it has been headquartered ever since. For a century, the Club has been led by women of color like Jennie Horne and exists as a forum to self-organize from and advocate for their community. Its members have always been dedicated to education and the role that community service plays in making lives and community richer.

Jennie is remembered as personifying the motto of the Martha Briggs Educational Club: “Lifting as we climb.” Throughout her life, Jennie Horne was a tireless advocate for the disadvantaged. Through her government positions, involvement with community organizations, and everyday encouragement, Jennie worked to bring aid and assistance to those who needed it most. In 2020, residents and friends of New Bedford honored Jennie by selecting her as one of two women represented by large murals at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Jennie exemplified how one woman can light the way for others, who in turn can light the way for those who follow.

Thank you to the family of Jennie Horne for their contributions to Jennie’s biography and providing photographs. Their stories showcased Jennie’s special qualities and tireless efforts on behalf of her family and community.

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With careers marked by a series of firsts in New Bedford politics, Rosalind Poll Brooker (1928-2016) and Rosemary Tierney (1932-2020) were trailblazers for women in law and politics. Rosalind, the first woman elected to the City Council, the first female City Council president, and the first female City Solicitor; and Rosemary, the first and only woman to be elected mayor, as of 2021, used political office to mobilize change from within the walls of City Hall.

Rosalind Poll Brooker overcame every obstacle to make her community a better place. Not only did Rosalind enter the fields of law and politics at a time when women were expected to focus on home and family, she also did not let polio, which left her using crutches, hold her back. She began her public service career in 1969 when she was elected to the New Bedford City Council. Although she was first passed over to be City Council president, Rosalind was elected to the role at the next opportunity. Her colleagues described her as tough, kind, fair, and tenacious.

Mayor John Bullard, who named Rosalind as New Bedford’s first female City Solicitor, the chief legal officer of the city, stated “As a city councilor she had a strong personality. She was a great lawyer and a dynamic person.” Former New Bedford City Solicitor Irene Schall remembered Rosalind as an intelligent leader dedicated to advancing women attorneys. Shortly after her 1969 election, Rosalind stated, “I’m not going down in history, I’m going up.” She continued to rise up throughout her life bringing other women with her.

Committed to public education, Rosemary Tierney was elected to the New Bedford School Committee in 1971, where she served for several years. Beginning in 1984, she was elected to the Massachusetts Governor’s Council three times. Rosemary’s trademark grassroots campaigning style, which she perfected in these early elections drove her to victory in the 1991 mayoral race. Former Mayor Scott Lang remembered Rosemary as someone who "understood that door-to-door neighborhood campaigning and personal relationships drove public policy. No one in the City has ever built coalitions to drive an issue like Rosemary Tierney."

Rosemary succeeded in the arena of male-dominated politics by working hard to create programs and policies that included all New Bedford residents. During her first year in office, she unveiled her “Cornerstone for Change” plan to rebuild New Bedford. Perhaps her most important accomplishment was restoring New Bedford’s financial stability through tough budgetary controls.

As firsts in their offices in New Bedford, Rosalind and Rosemary encouraged other women to be politically active by supporting female lawyers and harnessing the networking power of women and women’s groups to strengthen grassroots campaigning. They brought traditional community-based organizing into the formal halls of city government, opening new avenues for women to enact change in areas dominated by men.

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When Cuffe–a man of color, born to a Wampanoag woman and a freed slave–and his crew–all Black or Native men–disembarked, they were met with “astonishment and alarm” by the townsfolk. Locals ran to the docks and urged the Customs officials not to give his ship a landing permit. All his papers proved to be in order, so the permit was issued. It took three weeks for Cuffe to successfully complete his business. By the time of his departure, the people of Vienna looked at him differently. His “candor, modesty, and firmness” had swayed them. He and his crew sailed home, triumphant. From a small plot of land on the banks of the Westport River that spanned less than a half-acre in total, Cuffe operated a steady and successful shipping business of common goods between Westport, New Bedford, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard. The boats on his wharf grew larger and more numerous over time. The 18-ton Box Iron gave way to the larger Sun Fish, which grew into the 40 ton Mary, and finally, Cuffe’s favorite ships, the 268-ton Alpha and the 109-ton Traveller, docked alongside the Cuffe homestead. This shipping endeavor turned Paul Cuffe into the richest Black man of his time in America. At each new port, Cuffe and his crew faced the racist reactions of white Americans. At home in Westport, Paul and John Cuffe fought against racism on the local and state level. As freed black men, they were unable to vote, but were still taxed as any other man. The brothers refused to pay their taxes, claiming taxation without representation, and were thrown in jail. They appealed to the Massachusetts courts, and a law was passed requiring taxation of freed black men, but giving them the same rights as their white counterparts. In addition to his family homestead, Cuffe owned or leased extensive landholdings in Westport where he operated businesses like a gristmill and a West Indies goods store. He helped family members acquire property by purchasing land and passing it on under favorable terms. He also provided land to support local widows and as collateral to assist others in starting business ventures. Many of Cuffe’s land transactions helped other people to meet their financial obligations, a practical and generous approach that reflected his public-spirited activities. Cuffe’s philanthropy was extensive. A member of the Westport Society of Friends, he was appointed by the congregation to a committee to decide whether a new Meeting House should be constructed. Cuffe was a leader of that committee and provided half of the costs of the new building, the same one you stand before now. Behind the meeting house is a small group of graves, each belonging to a member of the congregation. Paul Cuffe and his wife lie behind the next house, past a wall, under a tree in a group of inconspicuous Quaker graves. Distinct, prominent, and seemingly separate. This is Paul Cuffe.

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It was the Golden Era of soccer in the United States, and there was no question about the top team, the Fall River Marksmen. The 1923-24 Marksmen team was a dominant force in the American Soccer League during a time when southeastern New England was known as the “Golden Crescent” of American soccer, encompassing Pawtucket, Fall River, and New Bedford.

Harold Brittan, who netted 15 goals from the striker position, and Bill McPherson, who had an incredible 366 appearances for the Marksmen during his career, led the team in scoring. With Ned Tate from South Shields, England, at fullback, and Findlay “Lindy” Kerr from Scotland as goalkeeper, the Marksmen defense habitually held opponents scoreless, generating an astonishing fourteen clean sheets that season.

The Marksmen completed the historic 1923-24 season with the first “double,” winning the American Soccer League and capturing the National Challenge Cup by defeating the Vesper Buick team in St. Louis. The majority of the Marksmen’s games that season took place at their home field in Tiverton, Mark’s Stadium, named for the team’s owner Sam Mark.

In 1922, Sam Mark (born Sam Markelevitch, in Fall River) bought the Fall River United of the American Soccer League and renamed them the Marksmen. Fall River already had a long history of championship soccer teams. In the late 19th century, the Fall River Rovers dominated play, winning the American Cup in 1888 and 1889.

Sam Mark built the Marksmen a stadium just over the Fall River border in north Tiverton. In Massachusetts, regulations derived from Puritan strictures, known as Blue Laws, restricted a number of activities on Sundays including the playing of sports and the purchase of liquor. By building his field in Rhode Island, where Puritan ideas never held sway, Sam Mark circumvented these laws.

The Marksmen eventually won the American Soccer League title seven times, including four consecutively, and the National Challenge Cup an incredible four times. In 1930, the Marksmen became the first American team to complete a domestic treble, meaning they were champions of America’s top-tier league, and won the National Challenge Cup and the Lewis Cup.

The following year, in a blunder reminiscent of the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees, Sam Mark moved the Marksmen to New York and renamed them the New York Yankees. Unlike Ruth’s Yankees, the team faltered almost immediately and the following year Mark merged the Yankees with the Providence Goldbugs and a team from New Bedford, which became the new home of his team, now called the New Bedford Whalers.

But Mark’s Stadium still had some magic left. Fall River’s Ponta Delgada team, playing in Tiverton, won numerous National Amateur Cup titles in the 1940s and 50s. Mark’s stadium was torn down in the late 1950s and replaced by a drive-in movie theater and a restaurant operated by the Ponta Delgada Club. Today, Mark’s Stadium is only a large empty lot, and the Ponta Delgada club is closed. In 2009, the sports website Bleacher Report named Mark’s Stadium the 8th most important soccer site in the United States.

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More than 100 years after its founding, the Feast still begins and ends at Our Lady of Immaculate Conception Church. Though in recent years the religious aspects of the Feast have taken a backseat to its many secular offerings, the Feast’s four Madeiran founders held the first event at the church in 1915.

The Diocese of Fall River founded Our Lady of Immaculate Conception Church in 1909 to serve New Bedford’s growing Portuguese community in the North End of the city. The ethnic church offers Portuguese and English masses, and parishioners relish its Portuguese traditions. Immaculate Conception Church was the third of the city’s three Portuguese churches. It followed Saint John the Baptist Church, the oldest Portuguese Church in North America, established in 1871 in the center of the city, and Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, established in 1902 on Bonney Street in the South End. The first Festas were simple gatherings on the church grounds that took place on a Sunday afternoon. Families gathered around temporary barraccas, or stands, to eat and socialize. Religious and cultural traditions from the Portuguese island of Madeira were at the heart of their celebrations. In recent years the Feast has grown into a four-day event. On its first day, a Thursday, feast organizers, or Festeiros, venerate, or worship, the Blessed Sacrament displayed in an elaborate monstrance (pedestaled case) on the altar. The Blessed Sacrament is the consecrated communion host that Catholics believe to be the real body of Jesus Christ. Afterwards, the congregation moves to the Feast grounds on nearby Madeira Field for the Benediction, or blessing, that officially opens the event.  On Sunday, the final day of the Feast, the Festeiros, their wives, and the other Club Madeirense S. S. Sacramento members gather at the Feast Grounds to march in formation to the church for a special High Mass at 10:00 AM. There the celebrant blesses them for their efforts on behalf of the Feast and for their respect for the Feast’s religious traditions.   Father Daniel Reis regrets the Feast’s change in focus over the years from religious to secular, according to the Anchor, a newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River. What was once a religious procession is now just a parade without the statues of saints and other reminders of the feast’s origins. Father Reis still marches in the parade and enjoys the traditional foods the Feast has to offer, but he hopes for more. 2014 marked the 100th anniversary of the Feast. There was talk of bringing back the traditional religious procession, but it did not happen. Immaculate Conception Church’s congregation is shrinking, like many Catholic churches in America. The recent closures of other churches in New Bedford is alarming, and parishioners of Immaculate Conception Church hope and pray the same does not happen to them. They are proud that they celebrate other Portuguese religious feasts in traditional ways including the Feast of Senhor da Pedra (Jesus of the Rock) and the Holy Ghost Feast, and hope to continue for many years to come.  

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This metal archway welcomes 100,000 attendees each year to New Bedford’s Feast of the Blessed Sacrament. It is a year-round reminder of the importance of this annual event in New Bedford’s North End. Positioned on the edge of Madeira Field, the archway also reminds us that the Feast is now a 100+ year-old tradition.

Immigrants from the Portuguese islands of the Azores, Cape Verde, and Madeira first arrived in New Bedford as crew aboard whaling vessels, but their presence in the town was often transitory. By 1905, more than 7,000 immigrants from these islands settled in the city, along with a smaller number from mainland Portugal. Attracted by jobs in the textile industry, Portuguese immigrants made up approximately 25% of the labor force by 1910. Many of the Portuguese immigrants who settled in this part of the city were from Madeira and worked in the mills along Riverside Avenue.

As special as the metal archway may be, there are other archways at the Feast that tie more deeply to its Madeiran roots. Volunteers erect nearly four-dozen bayberry archways each year spanning the city’s streets along the Feast’s parade route from Madeira Avenue to Acushnet Avenue, creating a festive and traditional backdrop for the Portuguese foods and varied entertainments inside the Feast grounds.

The gathering of the bayberry for these archways is an all-day affair and a beloved tradition for the Feast’s volunteer organizers, or festeiros. In 2013, reporters Diana Mendes and David Macomber followed the men who gathered the greens and documented the tradition.

On the Sunday before the Feast the male members of Club Madeirense gather at the Feast grounds for a hearty pre-dawn breakfast before hopping on school buses for the thirty-minute ride to Westport’s Gooseberry Island, singing along the way. Three busloads arrive on the island at 6:30 a.m., and spend much of the day collecting bayberry to decorate the arches. Some use tools their fathers and grandfathers used before them. The bayberry is the American equivalent of the bay leaves and laurel their ancestors collected in Madeira for their Feast of the Blessed Sacrament.

The men call the gathering of the greens festista. Their families join them as the day wears on, and they end the day with a ceremonial dip in the ocean and more music. The volunteers pack the greens in large containers and bring them back to the city. The night before the Feast they weave the greenery into metal arches near Madeira Field and decorate Our Lady of Immaculate Conception Church with additional greenery.

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Built in 1903, Manomet Mills was “equipped with every improvement for the manufacture of combed yarns from the better grades of American, Egyptian, and Sea Island Cotton.”

The complex eventually grew to include three buildings. Manomet 1 and 2 were connected by overhead bridges, now demolished. An extensive weave shed on the other side of Riverside Avenue has also been demolished. Manomet’s owner and President, William Whitman, developed or oversaw operations of a variety of textile mills throughout the East Coast including the nearby Whitman Mills.

In promotional materials for his companies, Whitman claimed an enlightened attitude toward the well-being of workers: “The health and comfort of the operatives are very carefully considered, both because these precautions are the rightful due of the working people, and because an enlightened self-interest to-day demands health and comfort as essential to the highest industrial efficiency.”

Whitman sold Manomet Mills to Delaware Rayon Company in 1928, the same year a disastrous textile workers strike took place in New Bedford. When Delaware Rayon went bankrupt in 1954, the Acushnet Process Company continued to use Manomet 1 for rayon production and used Manomet 2 for golf ball manufacture. Cliftex Corporation, a New Bedford Manufacturer of men’s suits, moved its operations to the complex in 1970.

It 2000, when Cliftex announced its plans to "permanently and immediately terminate all operations and terminate all employees,” the future of this site looked bleak. It grew worse seven years later when the New Bedford City Council approved demolition of the complex despite objections from the mayor and historic preservationists.

Through the efforts of Mayor Scott Lang and his successor Jon Mitchell, Manomet Mills were spared from demolition. Today, the buildings contain seventy-six units of mixed income senior housing. The ribbon cutting ceremony included Barbara Biliko, who once worked in the mill that she now calls home.

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Before discount department stores became popular, New Bedford had Mars Bargainland. In the 1960s and 70s, the enormous high-ceilinged space contained a treasure trove of cut-price clothes, toys, and household items. A bit further inside the massive building shoppers found Food Mart, where workers boxed their groceries and slid them down rollers to be collected outside at street level. For many New Bedford residents, the memory of Mars Bargainland is still vivid, but few people remember this building’s original purpose. Designed by architects Charles Makepeace of Providence and Benjamin Smith of New Bedford and built between 1896 and 1917, Whitman Mills contained the highest density of looms in the region. The endless floors were relieved by tall windows, and spire-like chimney stacks exhausted plumes of smoke from the coal-fired boilers that powered the mills’ steam engines. The complex included an engine house, pipe house, pump house, machine shed, and office building, visually unified by Romanesque Revival details. Behind the mills loading docks extended into the Acushnet River, and across Riverside Avenue stood a large weave shed. The 1917 issue of the Official American Textile Directory gave a sense of the output of the Whitman Mills at their peak. $2 million of cloth were produced per year. Adjusted for inflation, this would equal more than $48 million in 2016. Whitman’s primary products included “Plain and Fancy Cotton and Silk Goods and Cotton Yarns,” produced on 138,128 ring spindles, 36,960 mule spindles, and 4,932 looms powered by steam and electric power. William Whitman, who built the mill, was a leader in New England’s textile industry for more than four decades. Whitman headed one of the world’s largest cotton textile manufacturing organizations and served as president of the Association of Wool Manufacturers. He also developed tariff policy related to the textile industry and advised Congress on trade matters. Despite Whitman’s business expertise, the mills he developed were not immune to economic pressures, and this one was no exception. Although the mill closed in 1932, the complex housed a variety of businesses including a cannery, in addition to Mars Bargainland, but they filled a small fraction of the space and employed a total of only about 500 people, less than a third of the Whitman Mills’ peak of 1,750 employees. Today, where once thousands of machines created continuous deafening noise, more than one-hundred elderly residents live in cozy studios and apartments. Named Whaler Place with unintentional irony, the development references the city’s more illustrious past rather than the textile industry that sustained the city long after the end of whaling. The floors once covered with a layer of cotton fiber now gleam with refinished wood and plush carpeting. The 18-foot ceilings are perhaps the only reminder of the buildings’ former use.

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As patrons poured into the Orpheum Theater on opening night, April 15, 1912, the celebration may have been muted by news of the sinking of the Titanic early that morning. However, these were good times for New Bedford. The city’s economy thrived on its foundation of textile production and immigrant labor, and a performance by the Five Musical Durands was soon to inaugurate a spectacular new theater in a prime location between shops and restaurants on busy Water Street in the South End.

Although known today as the Orpheum Theater, the French Sharpshooter’s Club of New Bedford—Le Club des Francs-Tireurs—constructed this building to serve as its headquarters. Formed by French-Canadian immigrants, the Sharpshooters Club was a social and paternal organization focused on competitive shooting, military-style drill teams, and marching bands.  The club hired Fall River architect and French-Canadian immigrant Louis Destremps to design the building. Destremps was familiar with the city, having worked on Saint Anthony of Padua Church (1912) in the North End and the New Bedford Car Barn (1910). Sharpshooters Hall featured a shooting range, grand ballroom, gymnasium, retail storefront at street level, and a 1,500-seat Vaudeville theater.  Destremps created a masterpiece of French Renaissance design. Enormous carved heads, representing the Greek Muses of arts and sciences, adorned the façade, along with complex bas relief detail cast in porcelain over a terra cotta base, the same technique that Destremps later used on the Star Store (1916) on Union Street in New Bedford. Above the four lower muses were ornate copper torches, which have since disappeared. Construction began in 1910 and was completed in 1912 at a cost of $110,000, about $2.7 million in 2016. The Sharpshooters didn’t operate the theater in their building, but leased it to the Orpheum chain, a booking agency that provided acts to theaters around the country. Sharpshooters Hall is the second oldest Orpheum Theater, after the Palace Theater in Los Angeles. Orpheum acts included Harry Houdini, actress Lily Langtry, and the Marx Brothers, along with jugglers, dancers, and other Vaudeville-style entertainers. With the advent of motion pictures, Sharpshooters Hall installed a projection system and treated its patrons to films like King Kong and Citizen Kane. During the Second World War, the shooting range was used to train soldiers, while the theater kept patrons distracted and informed with movies, short cartoons, and news reels. The theater itself was part of the show. The vast auditorium contained 1,500 seats and a wrap-around balcony. It was decorated with complex moldings, painted scenes on the ceiling, and intricate murals on the walls. The theater continued to operate sporadically throughout the 1950s, but closed in 1962 when the French Sharpshooter’s Club sold the entire building. A tobacco company used the building as a warehouse, and a market operated out of the back for a number of years. The theater was abandoned to face the ravages of time and neglect. Today, Sharpshooters Hall and the Orpheum are privately owned, and the building remains in disrepair. 

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If it’s the first weekend in August, it’s time for “The Feast.”

New Bedford’s Feast of the Blessed Sacrament is the largest Portuguese Feast in the world and attracts 100,000 visitors to its festival grounds on Madeira Field each year. Now more than 100 years old, the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament was founded by four immigrants from the Portuguese island of Madeira in 1915. One popular story explains that they held the Feast in thanksgiving for their safe ocean journey to America. That may be true, but mostly the Feast was their effort to connect with the cultural and religious traditions of their native Madeira and to share those customs with their children in their new home.  The Feast has grown exponentially from a simple one-day religious festival hosted by Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Church on Earle Street into a massive four-day event that successfully blends popular entertainment with cultural and religious traditions.  Since 1953, the Feast has been organized and presented by the feisteros (which translates to “party-people”) of the Club Madeirense S. S. Sacramento. These volunteers work throughout the year to plan the food, live music and entertainment, parade, Museum of Madeiran Heritage, and religious celebrations that come together to create the Feast. They consider it an honor to do so. Women and children now play important roles, but traditionally the male members of Club Madeirense were the stars of the show.   Four stages of live entertainment feature traditional Portuguese music and dance provided by New Bedford’s Grupo Folclorico, as well as contemporary rock, pop, and country performers. There is no entrance fee, so all the entertainment is free. Nights at the Feast can get a little rowdy, especially in front of the main stage, but the feisteros have taken steps to ensure that there are quiet grottos where families and friends can gather for conversations and the evocative performances of traditional Fado singers.  Traditional foods draw large crowds to the Feast. Barraccas (stands) on Madeira Field feature bacalhau (dried salted and spiced codfish), cacoila (marinated pork), favas (beans in spicy sauce), linguica (Portuguese sausage), pops (crusty rolls), and malassadas (deep-fried sweet bread dough coated with sugar). A culinary highlight for many Feast-goers is the opportunity to cook their own carne de espeto, large chunks of beef on six-foot long metal skewers that they turn over a blazing hot charcoal pit. Experienced chefs continually pour beer over their beef and bring zip-top bags of vegetables from home to add to their skewers.  Volunteers sell beer in vast quantities at the Feast, but Madeiran wine is the traditional drink of choice. Visitors line up ten deep to buy tiny cups of what has been called “Portuguese crack.” Madeiran wine evolved by accident in the hulls of sixteenth-century ships as a result of the constant movement and sauna-like conditions that gave the vinho a brandy-like quality. The Feast is the only event allowed to purchase Madeiran wine by the cask, which requires a permit from the Madeiran government.   100,000 visitors look forward to the Feast each year, but the event is more meaningful for the hundreds of volunteers, often multiple generations of the same families, who make it happen. At the 100th celebration of the Feast, Father Manuel P. Ferreira, pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish from 1979 to 1992, said, “It’s a renewal of not only their faith, their customs and their culture, but also a renewal of their brotherhood together.”

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Listen closely and you might hear the footsteps of hundreds of mill workers who lived in tenements on the block bounded by Rivet, Potomska, Second, and First Streets. Only two remain, but there once existed a complex of ten six-tenement buildings erected by the Potomska Mills for its workers.

Built in 1871 on South Water Street, Potomska Mills produced shades, umbrellas, jeans, and print cloth, rather than the sheets and shirts produced at Wamsutta. Potomska was the first textile manufactory established after the Wamsutta Mills more than twenty years earlier, but the two companies were not in competition. They produced different goods and shared the same president. Potomska also shared Wamsutta’s need to attract workers by providing suitable rental housing.  Potomska worker housing took cues from the design of Wamsutta tenements on Hazard, State, and Austin Streets. Potomska constructed six “four-tenements” with four-room apartments stacked on two sides of the building and additional sleeping rooms on a smaller third floor. The buildings featured flanking entries surmounted by doorway hoods and modest Italianate-style brackets at the rooflines. As Potomska Mills expanded, its owners added four additional four-tenements to the original six, forming a quadrangle surrounding an unpaved laundry yard. Diagonally adjacent to the four-tenements, Potomska constructed six three-deckers, with single apartments on each floor and perhaps stacked front porches, which later defined this building form. Built in 1871, these may have been the first corporate-owned three-deckers in New Bedford. Potomska likely reserved them for the families of skilled workers, while unskilled workers lived in the ten four-tenements across the street, and in an additional sixteen Potomska four-tenements scattered throughout the area.  Despite this tenement building-boom, by the 1890s the housing demand from the influx of immigrant mill workers outstripped available supply, and families often took in boarders to earn extra income. Potomska failed to adequately maintain the buildings, and in 1894, the New Bedford Daily Mercury referred to the “squalor” of the Potomska tenements. In 1898, the New York Evening Journal claimed they were "more filthy than any New York tenement." The Potomska Mills were demolished in 1935, and the area they occupied between Potomska and Blackmer Streets is now largely vacant. The three-deckers built by Potomska for their skilled workers were moved in 1900 to make way for a new public school to serve the children of this largely immigrant neighborhood. The whereabouts of these buildings is unknown. Out of the group of ten four-tenements, only two survive, in differing states of repair. Once surrounded by a dense residential neighborhood, they are now accompanied only by a behavioral health center, parking lots, and a silent vestige of their former courtyard. 

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“Ever Since I Can Remember, I’ve Been Working”—Alfred Benoit

Alfred Benoit was one of many youths who spent their childhood laboring in the brutal, unforgiving mills of New Bedford. Born September 3, 1900, Alfred began working in 1912 as a floor sweeper but became skilled at repairing the looms that sustained the New Bedford textile industry.

We know of Alfred partly from photographs taken by social worker and labor activist Lewis Hine, who came to New Bedford to document the conditions in the mills for his work with the National Child Labor Committee. The work of Hines and other reformers like Jacob Riis helped to change harsh child labor policies, which had allowed children under sixteen years-old to work in dangerous and unhealthy conditions for more than ten hours a day. In January, 1912, Hine photographed part of the Benoit family in their rented tenement on North Front Street. He jotted this note:

Slovenly kitchen living-room of family of Alfred Beniot [sic], 191 N. Front St., a sweeper in Bennett Mill; has been there for two months. Mother works in the same mill; father is a canvasser (and shiftless). Said, “I’m de father of 11 children.” The baby in the girl’s arms is one they are keeping for another woman. The mother would not get in the photo. Alfred had bad eyes this morning (influenza apparently) and mopping them with a filthy rag. One of the little ones had the same trouble. Another had a boil on his face.

When Hine took this photograph in 1912, three of Alfred’s siblings had already died, and Hine observed the poor health of the Benoit children. 

Alfred’s father, Archille, came to New Bedford from Canada around 1905. He worked as a weaver, moving between New Bedford, Fall River, and Waltham, and briefly returned to Canada, following rumors of economic opportunity. By 1912, Archille was employed as a canvasser, going door-to-door selling goods and services. Hine considered him to be lazy, but it is possible that Archille was worn down by years of hard labor.

The Benoit house at 191 North Front Street was likely a three-decker tenement. A 1911 map of New Bedford indicated that the property was owned by M. Rogers. Behind the house was the New Bedford Day Nursery, and a block away was the St. Rose School, but it is unlikely that the Benoit children were able to take advantage of these facilities.

Alfred married his wife, Nora, in 1923, and together they raised seven children. Alfred’s grandchildren remember him as “a man who truly enjoyed life.” His granddaughter Nancy, the first of the Benoit family to graduate college, recalls that Alfred “wasn’t an overachiever. He enjoyed what he had.” Alfred enjoyed lawn bowling and sometimes traveled to Canada to compete in checkers tournaments. He spent time at the Brown Jug, a neighborhood bar owned by Francis Lawler, who served a New Bedford’s mayor in the late 1950s. Alfred and Lawler became good friends.

The three-decker on North Front Street was demolished to make way for Interstate 195, but still standing is the house on Clark Street where Alfred lived with his own family and the Brown Jug, a North End institution. Alfred’s son in law, Romeo Pothier, recalls him as a man with many friends. Asked if Alfred ever spoke of his childhood, Pothier recalled, “He once told me, ‘Ever since I can remember, I’ve been working.’”

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Warren Buffet’s empire started with a fit of pique. In 1964, Buffet acquired shares in a failing New Bedford textile mill known as Berkshire Hathaway. His intent was to sell the shares back to the owners and make a tidy profit. His good business sense did not fail him. The owners of the mill, the Stanton family, agreed to buy back the shares from Buffet at $11.50 a share (Buffet had paid $7.50). However, when the Stantons sent Buffet a formal offer, they attempted to undersell him to $11.37½ per share. This was a miniscule amount, but Buffet responded angrily by acquiring enough shares to seize ownership from the Stantons. By 1965, he controlled Berkshire Hathaway, and its cash and assets became the foundation of his investment empire.  Berkshire and Hathaway began as separate textile enterprises. Berkshire was based in Adams, Massachusetts, and Hathaway in New Bedford. In 1912, The Plunkett family controlled Berkshire, with its 130,000 spindles and 6,500 looms. The Hathaway family still presided over their textile concern of 108,000 spindles and 3,400 looms, but Seabury Stanton ran the company. Both companies survived the Great Depression, and in 1955 decided to merge, though which company initiated the merger seems to be a matter of dispute. Buffet’s investments, funded by Berkshire Hathaway’s assets, thrived and grew into a multinational conglomerate that still carries the name of his original purchase. However, the textile mills became the victims of a fading industry, and Buffet closed them in 1985. He later told the Wall Street Journal that "One of the dumbest things was to make a textile company the base of other things we bought or invested in." Although Buffet retained the name Berkshire Hathaway for his conglomerate, he seems to have little emotional attachment to the place where it began. In 2014, Jon Mitchell, the mayor of New Bedford, attempted to stall the demolition of part of the Berkshire Hathaway mills and to interest Buffet or another investor in restoring the buildings. He failed, with Buffett saying, "I don't know what you'd do with that place."  Part of the mill complex was destroyed in favor of a parking lot. The rest of Berkshire Hathaway could soon face a similar fate.

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Rainbow-colored homes spring up from the street grid in New Bedford’s West End like children’s play blocks. However, underneath the colorful patina of the Temple Landing Apartments lays a dramatic history of protest, neglect, and reuse.

To understand the full history of these bright new houses you must travel back half a century to the summers of the late 1960s and early 1970s. During the Civil Rights era, Black residents of New Bedford increasingly voiced their discontent over high unemployment and discriminatory hiring practices, poor public schools, and inadequate, unsafe housing.

In a series of actions called “the rebellion” by protestors and “the riots” by many others, the summer of 1970 erupted in arson, looting, sniper fire, and street confrontations in an increasingly hostile relationship between New Bedford’s Black residents and the police department. At one point, the National Guard was placed on alert in nearby Fall River.

These conflicts started in a variety of ways. Protests arose over the arrests of young African American men without obvious justification, and again when three white teenagers from surrounding towns drove into the neighborhood and shot indiscriminately into a crowd, killing one bystander and wounding several others. A white resident driving through the area told police he had been shot in the ankle as he passed the protest headquarters. The following day, New Bedford and state police raided the building, targeting the Black Panther-affiliated organizers. Twenty-one people were arrested, including unaffiliated activists, community supporters, and bystanders, and were charged with conspiracy to commit murder, anarchy, and riots.

Following this unrest, a group of community members established the United Front Development Corporation, which supported the construction of more and higher quality housing in the neighborhood on the site of the New Bedford Cordage Company, established in 1842 by ship owners and captains who needed rope for whaling vessels. The company grew and eventually filled a four-acre parcel bounded by Court, Emerson, Ash, and Kempton Streets, before closing in 1964. In 1973, a massive fire destroyed a two-block section of the vacant rope factory, and the remainder was demolished, along with older, blighted housing to make way for the United Front Homes.

The project was progressive and experimental for its time. Closed off from the general street grid, the 200-unit affordable housing development was accompanied by green space, a community center, and a daycare facility.

However, these 200 units did not meet the demands of the housing shortage. Meanwhile, the closed-off nature of the compound prevented police from driving through the development. Crime flourished, much of it committed by the United Front street gang, further damaging the development’s reputation. In 2008, a quarter of all shootings in New Bedford took place in United Front.

The tide began to turn after 2009, when several gang members were arrested. In 2010, the Boston-based group Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH) extensively renovated the complex, partnering with United Front Development Corporation to improve 138 units, demolish 62 others, and build 35 new units. The net loss of 27 units was caused by reopening the complex to the street grid, connecting United Front with the rest of the city, and making crime prevention easier.

The new developers, eager to shed the connotations that United Front carried, renamed the development “Temple Landing” after Lewis Temple, the African-American inventor of the toggle harpoon that revolutionized whaling. Crime in the neighborhood has decreased since the opening of the new units, but only time will tell if this project serves the community better than its predecessor.

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In 1847, a building without precedent in New Bedford began to rise north of the harbor in a grassy field along the banks of the Acushnet River.

The building was five stories tall, of rough-hewn local granite, and about as long as the distance between streets in the older whaling center of town. A steam engine designed and built by Providence’s George H. Corliss powered ten thousand spindles, which began producing cotton goods in 1849. As the city’s first successful large-scale textile mill, Wamsutta set the standard for those that followed.

Wamsutta Mills became known for its production of top quality cotton shirting and sheeting. Business thrived, and in 1853, Wamsutta built a second mill adjacent to the first, followed in 1862 by Wamsutta 3. Production declined during the Civil War due to labor and material shortages, but the company added a fourth mill in 1870. Wamsutta 4 was powered by another Corliss steam engine, the largest of its kind in the world. When the company added Wamsutta 5, the engine doubled in size, surpassing the famous steam engine that Corliss provided to power Machinery Hall during the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

By 1892, Wamsutta owned seven mills and was the largest cotton-weaving factory in the world. Five years later, it operated more than four-thousand looms and employed more than two-thousand workers. By the mid-1920s, Wamsutta updated its facilities from steam power to electric and refurbished its machinery. When the Great Depression struck the nation in 1929, more than two-dozen textile mills closed in New Bedford. Wamsutta, however, managed to survive and thrive throughout World War II. The company adapted its product line to include items needed for the war effort: uniforms, hot air balloons, gas mask material, and canvas supplies.

Wamsutta closed in 1958 when the company’s owners relocated its operations and much of its equipment to South Carolina to take advantage of cheaper labor costs. In 2006, Wamsutta Mills 4 & 5 were redeveloped as loft-style apartments. Many other Wamsutta structures remain including Wamsutta 6, a weave shed, the mill pond that provided water for steam engines, and an historic ice house and weave shed.

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