this name is variously spelled Acushena,
Accushnutt, Cushnet, Acushnett, Acushnet, etc. The spelling now always
used is Acushnet. Apponegansett was often spelled without the initial A.

[2] The original township of Dartmouth was owned by thirty-six
proprietors at the time of its settlement. This old proprietorship was a
_quasi_ corporation, which existed for 170 years. It conveyed all the
lands sold until at last nothing remained. Its meetings were then mere
formalities, and they finally died for lack of attendance.

[Illustration: THE HEAD OF THE RIVER]

In a brief article it is impossible to give more than the cream of the
whole story of the growth and existence of this settlement. It
experienced the vicissitudes of Indian depredations and wars. In the
King Philip war it was nearly obliterated, only the little settlement of
Apponegansett surviving. But at the return of peace the settlers took up
their old avocations, and gradually, but surely, made the old town of
Dartmouth. The story of nearly every other outlying settlement in those
days is the story of this one, so that all that concerns us are the
historical events peculiar to this.

[Illustration: Along the Wharfs]

[Illustration: RELICS OF THE LAST CENTURY.]

These early inhabitants combined tilling the soil and extracting the
wealth of the sea, only, however, as shore fishermen, and an occasional
off-shore whaling voyage in small boats. One event in early history
shows that the people were possessed of something more than the
traditional courage and bold seamanship for which southern Massachusetts
was ever famed, and shows a spiritual courage as well as that deliberate
manly determination to overcome all physical obstacles to existence with
which the early settlers were permeated.

[Illustration: NEW STATION OF THE OLD COLONY RAILROAD.]

[Illustration: CUSTOM HOUSE.]

[Illustration: COURT HOUSE]

This was the dispute between the General Court at Plymouth and the town
authorities regarding a settled minister. A good two-thirds of the
people were Friends, and one of their number provided for their
spiritual wants without compensation. Those remaining were mostly
Baptists, who also had among them a _quasi_ minister who acted as
pastor. But the General Court at Plymouth wanted the settlers to have
_their_ kind of a minister; so in 1671 they ordered the settlers to
raise L15 by taxation "to help towards the support of such as may
dispense t