Fact-Check: No, Fall River, Massachusetts, Was Not ‘Built by Immigrants’


Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA) claimed the host-city of his response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, Fall River, Massachusetts was “built by immigrants.”


What is now Fall River was first established in the 1600s by English settlers who were not “immigrants” but colonists. A native-born family, the Bordens ran a mill in what became the town for generations before and after the American revolution. Industrialization began when Col. Joseph Durfee, a native-born Revolutionary War hero built the first factory in 1811. Later, at the end of the 19th Century a wave of immigrants swelled the town’s population. Immigrants, however, never made up a majority of the population of Bristol County, where Fall River lies, even at their early 20th Century peak.


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