Sandwich Quaker Meeting House

The Sandwich Quaker Meeting was first gathered on 13 April 1657 at the home of William Allen on Spring Hill Road in East Sandwich, about 500 yards from the present meeting house.  Among the attendees was Nicholas Upsall who had been expelled from Boston for his heretical beliefs.  By 1658 there were sixteen Quaker families in Sandwich, meeting secretly to avoid punishment.  But in 1694 the town granted the Quakers land on Spring Hill for a burial ground and meetinghouse. This structure was built in 1810.   Today it is considered the home of the oldest continuous Quaker meeting in America.

This building was originally made on the Kennebec River in Maine and shipped to Sandwich.  It was reassembled according to the numbered timbers.  There are original carriage sheds on each side of the meetinghouse, and the privies behind were used until 1992 when the community house was connected to the town water.  The burial ground is behind the meetinghouse, but the earliest burials were unmarked by gravestones.  There is no known record of early burials.

Around this meetinghouse there was a large Quaker village with a Quaker school, the Wing and Hoxie family homesteads (now museum houses open to the public in the summer), and homes of other early Quaker families. Surnames include Bowman, Crocker, Holway, Gifford, Jones, Ewer, West, Russell and others.  The Religious Society of Friends is still continuing services at this meetinghouse, and worship is 10am every Sunday. Visitors are welcome. 

SANDWICH

MEETING of FRIENDS

Sandwich Monthly Meeting of Friends, established in 1657, is the

oldest continuous Quaker meeting in North America.  It consists

of congregations here, in West Falmouth and in Yarmouth.

This meetinghouse, the third on this site, was built in 1810.

Meetings for worship are held here at 10:00am each Sunday.

Meetings for worship are also held each Sunday throughout the

year at 10:00 am at the South Yarmouth Meetinghouse and

10:00am at the West Falmouth Meetinghouse.

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Visitors are always Welcome

For the truly curious:

East Sandwich Friends Meeting House
6 Quaker Road
East Sandwich, Massachusetts 02537

Sandwich Monthly Meeting history webpage (from the Cape Cod Quakers website):  http://www.capecodquakers.org/smm_history.html 

A listing of burials in Sandwich Quaker Cemetery http://www.capecodgravestones.com/sandquaker.html 

“The Quaker Way of Life”, Cape Cod Times, 20 August 2007, https://www.capecodtimes.com/article/20070820/news/708200318

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To Cite/Link to this post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Sandwich Quaker Meeting House", Nutfield Genealogy, posted Sept 21, 2021, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2021/09/sandwich-quaker-meeting-house.html: accessed [access date]).