On Sunday, Feb. 19, at 2:30 p.m. the  Dartmouth Historical and Arts Society will host a presentation titled “an introduction to the old Dartmouth Town Meeting records database.”

This will be presented by Bob Harding, the president of the Historical and Arts Society.

Focus will be on the Town Meeting Records from 1674 through 1787, the span from shortly after the incorporation of the original town until the date of the ‘first division’, when New Bedford was split into its own municipality (which consisted of the geographical territory of present day New Bedford, Fairhaven, and Acushnet). 

This period encompasses the time when Dartmouth was on the frontier of the Plymouth Bay Colony, until after the American Revolution. 

Biographical ‘dossiers’ will be developed for Individuals cited in the Town Meeting Records who are also noted in other primary databases provided by DHAS such as the Quaker records and the land records.

This discourse will serve as a tutorial for researchers developing fact based chronicles of early Old Dartmouth residents from the sections of town earlier called ‘Cushena’, ‘Ponegansett’, and ‘Coaxet’ and now Acushnet, New Bedford, Fairhaven, Dartmouth, and Westport.

The presentation will be held at the society’s historic schoolhouse at 1205 Russells Mills Road.

A donation of $5 is suggested. Refreshments will be served.