Where was Westport’s first Town Meeting held?
Posted on February 16, 2026 by Jenny ONeill
“The inhabitants of said Town of Westport who were qualified by law to vote, being legally notified and warned by the said William Almy, assembled at the dwelling house of William Gifford in said Westport on Monday the Twentieth day of August 1787 at ten of the clock A.M.”
An open field at 1074 Main Road marks the site of the first Town Meeting in Westport held after the town legally separated from Dartmouth in 1787. At the time it was the William Gifford property. The house was devised to his son Richard, who was a drummer boy in the Continental Army. The house was demolished in 2002. (Everything Westport and MACRIS).
The town adopted a traditional town meeting government to elect inaugural officers, including a Moderator, Selectmen, Town Clerk, Treasurer, and Assessors.
The subsequent town meeting was held at “the Dwelling House of Joseph Gifford, Innkeeper, at the bridge.”
By 1789 plans for a town hall were underway. It was a community effort, with many individuals providing timber, shingles, window frames, nails, and glass.
1074 Main Road, Photo from EverythingWestport shows the property circa 2001.
Photo from Eleanor Tripp collection at the Westport Library. Information provided by Eleanor Shertlif (Richard Gifford was her great-grandfather) that this was the site of the first town meeting.
Ratification of the Constitution
In November 1787, the town meeting chose William Almy to represent Westport at the State House Convention “for the purpose of assenting to and ratifying the constitution of the United States.”
Who could vote?
Male freeholders and other inhabitants of Westport, twenty-one years of age and upward having a freehold estate within this Commonwealth of the annual income of three pounds or any estate of the value of sixty pounds.