America 250 Author Talk: Patriots of the South Coast

Plumb Library and the Rochester Historical Society are excited to be hosting local author Robert Barboza on Saturday, May 9 at noon to talk about his latest book: Patriots of the South Coast. He will be talking about South Coast soldiers, sailors, and ship builders who played important roles in the American Revolution, including two senior officers in the American Revolution who were from Rochester. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, and refreshments will be provided courtesy of the Rochester Historical Society. This event is free – please save your seat by registering on the library’s online Events Calendar today.

Retired journalist and local history researcher Robert Barboza has published a second book about South Coast soldiers, sailors, and ship builders who played important roles in the American Revolution (1775 – 1783), Patriots of the South Coast.

The 140-page book is a collection of newspaper articles on Revolutionary War history printed over the years in area publications, revised and expanded with new research materials. The new book is a follow-up to his first book on local history in the War for Independence from Great Britain, Patriots of Old Dartmouth: Local Heroes of the Revolutionary War, published in 2014 to help celebrate the 350th anniversary of the town’s incorporation.

For the past two decades, Mr. Barboza has often lectured locally about the region’s Patriot heroes such as Continental Marine Captain Stephen Earl of Westport; Fairhaven militia captain Nathaniel Pope, who led a 1775 raid to capture the Royal Navy sloop Falcon in Dartmouth waters; and Captain Job Tripp of Dartmouth, wounded and cast ashore far from home after his merchant vessel was battered by cannon fire from a British warship.

The new volume was assembled and published in time to coincide with the ongoing nationwide celebration of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, starting in 2025. His goal was to ensure that these little-known local stories were collected and preserved for posterity as part of the permanent historical record of the South Coast.

Mr. Barboza is the former editor of Dartmouth’s weekly newspaper, The Chronicle, and served as a correspondent for many other South Coast newspapers over the years. He has been a student of local history for 20 years, and authored dozens of articles on local history during his long journalism career. Two of those articles won awards from the New England Press Association for historical reporting.

He currently serves on the board of directors for the Dartmouth Historical & Arts Society, and formerly served on the board of directors for the Dartmouth Heritage Preservation Trust, which helped subsidize the publication of his first book on local history.