(1607-1695) Fairhaven's own Pilgrim John Cooke, the oldest child of Francis and Hester (Mahieu) Cooke, was baptized in Leyden, Holland, between January 1 and March 31, 1607. In July, 1620, John Cooke and his father sailed from Leyden on the Speedwell, the smaller of two ships bound for America. When the Speedwell sprung a leak and was deemed unseaworthy, the Cookes were transferred to the larger ship, Mayflower. John Cooke’s mother Hester and … [Read more...]

The Delano Family: Presidential Ancestors LT. JONATHAN DELANO, FAIRHAVEN’S PRESIDENTIAL ANCESTOR After the Mayflower, the next ship to land at Plymouth was the Fortune, which arrived in November 1621. Aboard the Fortune was Philippe de Lanoy, a cousin of Pilgrim John Cooke. Upon his arrival in America, de Lanoy first lived in the home of his uncle Francis Cooke in Plymouth. In 1634, de Lanoy married Hester Dewsbury in Duxbury, where the … [Read more...]

(1792-1872) Founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church Joseph Bates Jr. was about a year old in 1793 when his parents, Col. Joseph and Deborah (Nye) Bates, moved with their family into the house in Oxford Village that they purchased from Zerviah Wood. Built in 1742, the house, now numbered 191 Main Street, was one of the oldest in the area. Here young Joseph grew up in a well educated and devout household, his father being both a Deacon … [Read more...]

(1827-1898) Lived in Fairhaven 1843-1849 Returned to Japan 1851 In 1843, Fairhaven became the home of the first Japanese person to live in America. The ties of friendship, first formed when a Fairhaven whaling captain rescued fourteen year old Manjiro Nakahama from a small island in the Pacific Ocean, have endured to this day and make Fairhaven a popular spot for visitors from Japan. Manjiro Nakahama was born in a fishing village in … [Read more...]

(1840-1909) Henry Huttleston Rogers was born in Fairhaven in 1840, the second of three children of Rowland and Mary (Huttleston) Rogers. As a boy he delivered newspapers, worked as a grocery clerk and was baggage master for the Fairhaven Branch Railroad. At the age of twenty-one, he left Fairhaven for the oil fields of Pennsylvania. There he and a partner, Charles Ellis, started their own oil company, the Wamsutta Oil Refinery in … [Read more...]

(1844-1908) First man to sail alone around the world On July 3, 1898, a few days after Capt. Joshua Slocum completed his three-year solo circumnavigation of the world in his small sloop Spray, he sailed the 36-foot craft up the Acushnet River to a place on the shore of the “Poverty Point” neighborhood of Fairhaven. There he tied up to a cedar post that had held the Spray when Slocum had first launched her several years earlier. “I could … [Read more...]

Notable Residents Since the town was first settled in the 1600s, Fairhaven has been home to a number of people whose renown has spread far beyond our boundaries. Here is a list of some of them. Several names are linked to longer biographies on this website. John Cooke, a Mayflower passenger in 1620 at the age of thirteen, Cooke, his wife Sarah (Warren), and four of their five daughters settled in what’s now Fairhaven in the early 1660s. A … [Read more...]