New Bedford, “The Whaling City,” is the largest city on Massachusetts’s south coast.  New Bedford is also a popular point of embarkation to Martha’s Vineyard.  It is home to large Portuguese and French communities, giving the city an international flavor.  New Bedford’s roots lie firmly in whaling, and it commemorates its past at the New Bedford Whaling Museum on Johnny Cake Hill (featuring an 89-foot half-scale model whaling ship and a blue whale skeleton) and the Whaleman’s Memorial outside the public library.

Among New Bedford’s notable natives and residents are abolitionist statesman Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville (author of Moby-Dick who worked here as a whaler), screenwriter Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential and Mystic River), and Irwin Jacobs (co-founder of Qualcomm).

New Bedford, the sixth largest city in Massachusetts, was originally settled by the Wampanoags, and sold to European settlers in 1652 in what has, of course, become a questionable land sale.  In any event, the area grew in residents and industry and became a city in 1847.  What followed was a century of whaling that surpassed Nantucket because of it was on the mainland; also, a New Bedford inventor, Lewis Temple invented the toggling harpoon.  The immigrant waves that hit New Bedford were initially English, then Portuguese, followed by Cape Verdeans, Polish, French and eastern Europeans.  In 2007 a famous immigrant raid took place in a leather factory in New Bedford, in which federal ICE agents raided the factory and sent 90 illegal immigrants to Texas, splitting up families and causing a national concern.

Over 93,000 people live in New Bedford, with 38,178 households and a household median income of $27,569.  The economic history includes the fact that many whalers left New Bedford when whale oil was diminishing in value and the gold rush was on in California, in 1849.  But in 1881, the textile trade was ushered in and the city maintained its prominence.  Today there are numerous corporations centered in New Bedford:  Southcoast Hospitals, Titleist and Riverside clothing.

New Bedford, in Bristol County has a Bristol County Superior Court right downtown, located at 441 County Street.  The two other Superior Courts in Bristol County are in Fall River and Taunton.  There is also a District Court in New Bedford, located at 75 North Sixth Street, serving New Bedford, Acushnet, Dartmouth, Fairhaven, Freetown, and Westport.  New Bedford also has a Housing Court Department located at 139 Hathaway Road.

Burns & Jain is located at Six Beacon Street, Suite 600, in Boston, Massachusetts 02108.  Driving directions to our office from New Bedford are as follows:  head north on MA-140.  Take Exit 12A to merge onto MA-24 North.  Exit onto I-93 North and take Exit 23 toward Government Center. Continue straight onto North Street, then turn left onto Congress Street. Turn right at State Street and then turn left onto Tremont Street. Make a right on Park Street and a right on Beacon Street.

Burns & Jain is proud to serve New Bedford residents in the practice areas of personal injury, auto accidents, legal malpractice, and personal bankruptcy.   Call our office at 617-227-7423 or request a consultation using our online form.