Tag: Assonet
Assonet is one of two villages in the town of Freetown, Massachusetts in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. An original part of the town, Assonet was settled in 1659 along with the city of Fall River, then a part of Freetown. It rests on the banks of the Assonet River. As of the 2000 census, the village had a total population of 4,084; up from 3,614 in 1990.
Assonet was first settled in 1659, shortly after the completion of Ye Freemen’s Purchase. It was part of the Plymouth Colony until the 1691 merger with the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The word comes from the local Wampanoag Indians, who had a settlement in the area, and has two meanings: “place of rocks” and “song of praise.” Those meanings are traditional, but the former can be segmented as:
where hassun or assin, which is a word used by southern New England Algonquian, means “stone”. The -et is a locative suffix: “at the place of the stone”. As the region is mainly a tidal marsh, the stone referenced is most likely…
