The Long family of Westport, Massachusetts and Tiverton, Rhode Island is an American family of colonial New England descent, with verified lineage to the founding families of Nantucket Island (1659), four Mayflower passengers (1620), and Norman-era English gentry (1066). The family has maintained roots in southeastern Massachusetts since the colonial era.
Geography
The family’s roots in southeastern Massachusetts run deep—through Fall River, where Representative John J. Long served nearly a quarter century in the State House; through Westport, where the family kept property on the Point for decades; through Tiverton, Rhode Island, where the current generation lives on land once governed by the Pocasset sachem Weetamoo.
Westport Point is a quiet place. No signage, no boardwalk, no tourist infrastructure. The houses have been there for generations. The families know each other. The harbor faces Buzzards Bay. It is the kind of New England that exists unchanged, not because anyone decided to preserve it, but because the people who live there never felt the need to change it. The family’s connection to the Point is measured in decades, not visits.
Deeper Than Geography
But the roots run deeper than geography. Through the Perry and Swiftlines, the family connects to the founding of Nantucket Island in 1659—not as distant observers, but as direct descendants of nearly every original proprietor. Through the Coffin line, the ancestry reaches to the Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Domesday Book. Through the Folger line, to the maternal grandfather of Benjamin Franklin. Four Mayflower passengers are direct ancestors.
The family has never sought recognition for these connections. The Kennedy letters sit in a drawer. The genealogical research was passed down quietly, generation to generation. This archive is simply the latest act of preservation—digitizing what has always been known, so that it endures beyond any one generation.
Two Traditions
The Irish lines on both sides—Long, Sullivan, Daley, Coogan, Wall, Kennedy, Thornton—arrived with nothing during and after the Great Famine and built lives in the mill cities of Massachusetts. They married into the old colonial families. The result is a family that carries both the grit of immigrants who started from zero and the roots of families who have been here since before the nation existed.
Representative John J. Long—born in Fall River, educated at B.M.C. Durfee High School and Boston University, a Korean War veteran—served 24 years in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He was instrumental in the formation of Bristol Community College and was among the earliest advocates for the merger that became UMass Dartmouth. His portrait appears on page 220 of the Public Officers of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts directory, 1961–1962. The correspondence from Kennedy and Dukakisis preserved in the family collection—the kind of thing that accumulates naturally over a quarter century in the State House.
A Maritime Family
The sea runs through every branch of this family. The Coffins built Nantucket’s whaling fleet. The Folgers surveyed the island and sailed its harbors. Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin commanded warships in the Royal Navy. The founding families of Nantucket turned a depleted farming island into the engine of a global maritime industry that lit the streets of London and Paris. The Quakervalues that shaped Nantucket—conscience, thrift, quiet service—carried forward through Lucretia Coffin Mott’s abolition work and into the family’s tradition of public service.
This is not a family that announces itself. It never has been. The work speaks. The records speak. The archive preserves what the family has always known.