Hixville Village Historic District

Hixville is a small crossroads village in northern Dartmouth, Massachusetts, covering about three acres around the meeting of Hixville Road and Old Fall River Road. Its core is the Hixville Christian Church, a Greek Revival building of 1853 on the site of Baptist meetinghouses raised in 1785 and 1811. Nearby are a cemetery from about 1820 with roughly 130 graves, a Greek Revival former store at 783 Old Fall River Road, the Federal-style Clothier Pierce House of about 1810, and the Colonel Jacob Collins Inn of about 1800. The village grew from the church, then from stagecoach traffic between New Bedford and Fall River beginning in 1826, and later from a local railroad stop serving farmers. It never boomed like the coastal parts of old Dartmouth, and that quiet history left its nineteenth-century character largely intact. The district was recognized for its local importance in community development and architecture, and for its likely archaeological remains from earlier meetinghouses and a burned tavern.