Bringing Alive Sandwich History (“BASH”)
Talk of the Town
Links To the Past:
The 250th Celebration – 1889
The 275th Celebration – 1914
The 300th Celebration – 1939
The 350th Celebration – 1987
A Bit About the Boardwalk
Main Street Then and Now
Sandwich-By-The-Sea (1914)
Sandwich, England
Town Hall Through the Years
Historic Houses
A Brief History of Sandwich
By Jonathan A. Shaw
Sandwich Historical Commission
Sandwich, the first town to be established on Cape Cod, was founded in 1637 by the persuasive and energetic Edmund Freeman. The location was appealing for the broad marshes bordering the sea resembled those of Sandwich, England, and were immensely valuable.
With little effort the marshes could immediately provide salt hay for livestock, unlike upland or “English hay” which required cultivation by the settlers. Other reasons also may have appealed to Edmund Freeman and the men and women who joined him. The land was part of Plymouth Colony whose Pilgrim founders were notably more liberal in their religious beliefs than the narrow-minded Puritans of Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Colony. Equally important, Edmund Freeman’s brother-in-law, John Beauchamp, was one of London’s ‘Adventurer’ investors in Plymouth Colony. Like today’s ‘venture’ capitalists, these men provided funds for the infant Colony and sought to encourage and profit from its success.
Approximately sixty families settled in Sandwich, and by 1639 they were building a Town House for civic and religious meetings. The town house site was at the corner of what is now River and Main Streets. It was on this site that Town Meetings and Congregational (and later Unitarian) Meetings were held for almost two hundred years until the Massachusetts State Legislature amended the State Constitution in 1833 to separate church and state; whereupon, in 1834 Sandwich erected the present Sandwich Town Hall, its Greek Revival architecture and massive columns evoking in Sandwich, as elsewhere in the nation, the birthplace of democracy.
Soon after settlement a grist mill was built, essential for the grinding of corn meal and the well-being of the entire community. Though the earliest years were largely undocumented and uneventful, an initial land dispute required the presence of Miles Standish to ensure a fair division of the town’s lands.
By the 1650s Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies were becoming attractive to a new faith, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Like most new faiths its members ardently proselytized. The Massachusetts Bay authorities reacted by banishing Quakers and finally in 1659 by executing them. Plymouth authorities undertook gentler steps of fines and other forms of retaliation.
Quaker Christopher Holder had arrived in Sandwich from England in 1657. Preaching the inner light as the source from God of personal and societal inspiration, he converted many Sandwich residents to the new faith, and the first Quaker Meetings occurred in Sandwich as early as 1658. Though Sandwich was under the thumb of Plymouth Colony and though the fines impoverished Sandwich Quakers, the movement continued to add new converts. The strength of the Quaker movement in Sandwich and the existing wide-spread religious ferment probably benefited from – and perhaps even caused – the 1653-54 departure of the Town’s first minister, William Leveridge/Leverich.
The Quakers also benefited from the quiet and secret encouragement given them by many citizens of the town, including Edmund Freeman who, as a confirmed Anabaptist, believed that everyone had a right to choose baptism and one’s faith as an adult. In 1673, after a gap of almost twenty years, a new minister, John Smith, was chosen as Sandwich’s second minister. In agreeing to the appointment, the Reverend Smith required that he never be asked to “lift a hand” against the Quakers.
Today, Sandwich’s Quaker Meetings are the oldest continuous Monthly Quaker Meetings in America.
In 1675-76 a conflict between the native Americans and the white settlers, known as King Philip’s War after its Indian leader, erupted across Massachusetts and neighboring areas. Sandwich and other settlements on the Cape and Martha’s Vineyard were spared from Indian attacks. Nevertheless, the fear of Indian attacks at the beginning of War or perhaps even earlier had led to the creation at the Wing Fort House in East Sandwich of what was probably a fortified palisade as a refuge and defense against Indian raids.
That Sandwich was spared during King Philip’s War was due to the isolation of the Cape Cod peninsula, the laymen missionary efforts of two Sandwich men, Thomas Tupper and Richard Bourne, and the loyalty of the friendly Native American population.
Tupper and Bourne had learned the Algonquin Indian language and had helped to build Indian churches, and Bourne had been essential in establishing Mashpee and its Meeting House on the border of Sandwich as a legal tract owned by the Native Americans themselves and recognized under Colony law.
Nonetheless, even in Plymouth Colony treatment of Native Americans changed in the aftermath of King Philip’s War. Three men found guilty of theft from a Sandwich resident, who in earlier years would have been fined or imprisoned, were sentenced to perpetual slavery to be used or sold by him as he saw fit.
During the Revolutionary War and the years leading up to it, Sandwich firmly supported the Patriot cause, but there were enough Tories in the Town to provoke factional disputes and discord. In 1773 the Patriots established the Town’s first Committee of Correspondence, and its seven resolutions were soon passed by the Town Meeting.
A member of the Committee was Doctor Nathaniel Freeman, who became one the Town’s and County’s most prominent Patriots. On Monday, September 26, 1775 Patriots erected a Liberty Pole, probably somewhere near the home of Melatiah Bourne who had given the timber for the pole. All day long men arrived in Sandwich from Rochester, Plymouth, Wareham and Middleboro. On the following day, September 27, at 6 a.m. the enormous assemblage, led by Dr. Freeman who had been chosen leader, in double-file order set out on the highway for the Barnstable Courthouse. Their purpose was to stop the Court, the Sheriff, and the Militia from acting in the King’s name. By 10 a.m. Freeman was on the steps of Courthouse surrounded by a crowd of a thousand or more. During the day and into the following morning all thirteen Justices signed agreements defying the Acts of the English Parliament, and the Sheriff resigned.
On that same September 28, word arrived that the Sandwich Liberty Pole had been cut down. Twenty-two Patriots were immediately sent to Sandwich to apprehend the perpetrators. Three were captured and forced to help re-erect the Sandwich Liberty Pole. On the evening of October 5 Dr. Freeman, who lived near the Old Town Sandwich Burial Ground, received a somewhat suspicious message that a patient required his attendance.
He set out on foot and passing by the Newcomb Tavern on his return he was severely beaten by six men, all Tories, and bleeding about the head from a long cut he was rescued by friends and carried home. Because the culprits were in danger of being lynched, they were immediately tried, fined, and released, but with mob violence against them still threatening, several leading citizens of Sandwich had them re-arrested and brought to the Sandwich Liberty Pole where Dr. Freeman’s assailants signed a confession, and the danger of mob violence subsided.
The Newcomb Tavern, the site of the attack on Dr. Freeman, was well known as Sandwich’s Tory Tavern. Brigadier General Timothy Ruggles lived in Sandwich for many years and had become owner of the Tavern after his 1735 marriage to the widow Bathsheba Newcomb. In 1778 when Massachusetts published a list of the three hundred most despicable Tories in the State, Ruggles was the third on the list. He left Sandwich some years before the Revolution, and when George Washington’s army forced the British evacuation of Boston, he wisely fled Massachusetts for the British sanctuary of Nova Scotia.
Over the years the population of Sandwich, which was primarily agrarian, Protestant, and of English origin, grew slowly. In 1825 that began to change. Boston entrepreneur Deming Jarves, after seven years as manager for a newly created Boston glass manufacturing firm, decided to establish a glass factory more fully under his own control. Sandwich was selected “for the proposed canal allowed safe shipping to the New York market, the abundance of wood the fuel for his voracious furnaces, and the proximity to Boston convenient business opportunities in both locations.” He established offices in Boston, raised capital there, and called the firm the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company. The firm grew rapidly and by the end of the 1840s had created in Sandwich one of the largest glass factories in the United States.
The firm brought enormous social and economic change to the town. Jarves relocated experienced glass workers and their families from Cambridge, Massachusetts and some from abroad. Many were Irish Catholics, and they lived in Sandwich in small single family homes as well as two, four, and six family wood-framed buildings constructed by the B & S Glass Company close to the Sandwich factory in an area that soon became known as Jarvesville. Management and few of the more skilled workers lived in larger homes in the earlier settled part of the Village, and those, together with the 18th century homes, comprise the heart of historic Sandwich.
The industrial revolution impacted Sandwich far more than any other Cape Cod town and with it came diversity and prosperity. Driven by the expansion of economic opportunities and the success of the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company, the population of Sandwich nearly doubled, and by 1850s the factory was open 24 hours a day, employing 550 workers, and producing an astounding 5,200,000 pieces of glassware annually.
Under Deming Jarves’ guidance, Sandwich glass, a key item in the Massachusetts industrial revolution, became known for its diversity and inexpensiveness. Deming Jarves himself has been called “The Father of Glass-Works in the United States.” He was the first person in the world to successfully press large glass hollow-ware, and “Probably the first drinking glass, made not by blowing in a mold but by pressing with a stamp, was a cylindrical goblet …. made in 1827 by Deming Jarves in Sandwich.”
The Boston & Sandwich glass factory’s products were largely pressed glass and included a remarkable range of items.1 What pewter was for the 18th century, and plastic was for the 20th century, glass was for the 19th century – a material capable of being formed into a multitude of useful objects. Yet by the 1880s glass manufacturing in Sandwich had largely ended. The causes were the loss of the leadership of Deming Jarves and his son John Jarves, the post Civil War depression, labor strikes, and, most important, competition from glass factories in Pennsylvania and the Mid-West located near gas fields and more suited to the industry’s economic health.
In the first half of the 20th century the most significant event for Sandwich was the completion in 1916 of the Cape Cod Canal. Remarkably, it was almost 300 years in coming. In 1623 the Pilgrims under the leadership of William Bradford and Miles Standish scouted the land between the Manomet and Scusset rivers, a traditional Native American portage, and determined this would be the best route for a canal.
In 1697 the General Court of Massachusetts considered a formal proposal to build a canal, but no action was taken. In 1776 George Washington, concerned about its military implications, had the location examined, and further surveys took place in 1791, 1803, 1818, 1824-1830, and 1860. Attempts were made later in the century to actually dig the canal, but soon failed. Finally, in 1909 work was begun by the Boston, Cape Cod, and New York Canal Company that had been established by a New Yorker, August Belmont. The Cape Cod Canal is now the longest sea-level canal in the world.
Only a mile of the canal, however, lies in the town of Sandwich. Had the canal been built before 1884 when the town of Bourne was created from the western half of Sandwich, the entire length of the canal would have been in the town of Sandwich. Before that time Sandwich stretched across the entire width of Cape Cod, from Buzzard’s Bay to Cape Cod Bay. The Bourne proponents of the split won the day by measuring the distances that its citizens had to travel – some, like those living in South Pocasset, as much as 12 ½ miles – to the seat of government at the Sandwich Town Hall.
Following the closing of Sandwich glass manufacturing, the town slumbered for almost 75 years, and the population of Sandwich remained stable until the middle of the 20th century when national prosperity and improved roads brought tourists and an increasing number of summer and year-round residents. From 1950 to 2000 the population expanded rapidly from approximately 1,500 residents to about 20,000. Startled by its rapid growth, the citizens of the town made a civic commitment to historic preservation and land conservation beginning in the 1960s, which was reinforced by the knowledge that the protection of Sandwich’s historic sites and unspoiled lands were vital to Sandwich’s heritage tourism, unique environment, and quality of life.
Sandwich, Seals and Sandwiches:
Sandwich is named for the seaport of Sandwich, Kent, England and the name of that town is, most likely, of Danish origin, meaning a sand place or camp on a bay (vig, wich) or near the mouth of a river. The word sandwich as an item of food came into being centuries later (we’ll get to that in a bit) .
The seal for Sandwich in Kent, England had 3 ships with lion heads. 
By 1900 all towns in Massachusetts were required to establish a town seal. The design adopted for Sandwich, Mass. was proposed by Melanie Elisabeth Norton (who married Jonathan Leonard in 1898). She drew American eagles in place of the British lions. On the version of the seal shown here, those 3 blips on the ships don’t look much like eagles, but we hear from the Leonard’s grandson that the town is working on re-drawing the seal so the eagles can be more easily discerned.
If you are curious about the Latin phrase on the Town Seal “Post Tot Naufragia Portus,” it translates to: “After So Many Shipwrecks There Is A Harbor (or a Haven).”
(click for larger view)
This phrase was also the motto of John William Montague (1718-1792), the 4th Earl of Sandwich, and is on the Montague family Coat of Arms. It is said that we get the name of the “sandwich” we eat from the 4th Earl. Legend has it that Montague was a hardened gambler and usually gambled for hours at a time at a restaurant, sometimes refusing to get up even for meals. He ordered his valet to bring him meat tucked between two pieces of bread so he didn’t need to bother with utensils to eat it. Because Montague was also known as the Earl of Sandwich, others began to order “the same as Sandwich!” And the name stuck.
An alternative explanation is that the Earl invented it to sustain himself at his desk, which seems plausible since there is ample evidence of the long hours he worked from an early start, in an age when dinner was the only substantial meal of the day, and the fashionable hour to dine was four o’clock.
Note however, the family of the Earls of Sandwich has no real connection to the English town itself, only the title. Apparently, the First Earl, Edward Montagu, originally intended to take the title of the Earl of Portsmouth—this might have been changed to honor the town of Sandwich, because the fleet he was commanding in 1660 was lying off the coast of Sandwich, before it sailed to bring Charles II back to England.
–Don Bayley, Sandwich Historical Commission
SOURCES:
OPEN SANDWICH: History of Sandwich Kent
WordSources.info
Hexmaster’s Factoids