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This building was originally made on the Kennebec River in Maine and shipped to Sandwich.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]). 

The Wing Fort House, Sandwich, Massachusetts

While we were exploring Cape Cod a few months ago we had a serendipitous discovery.  We were lost on a back road, searching for the Quaker cemetery, when we stumbled across this historic home.  It was the Wing Fort House on Spring Hill Road in Sandwich, Massachusetts.  Of course, we stopped to take a few photos before continuing our search. This house was built by an a relative who became a Quaker, so we knew we were very close to our destination!

This garrison home was built in 1641 by Stephen Wing.  (I descend from his grandfather, the Reverend Stephen Batchelder (1561 – 1656) through his two children Nathaniel (1590 – 1630) and Ann (b. about 1603) who married John Sanborn).  It is puzzling why this was built as a garrison, since the native Wampanoags were friendly to the English settlers on Cape Cod.  Stephen Wing lived here with his family and his mother, Deborah Batchelder (my 10^th great aunt) who was the wife of the Reverend John Wing.

Stephen Wing was one of the first Quakers in Sandwich, Massachusetts.  The Plymouth Court records have some of the first legal proceedings against the early Quakers in Sandwich.  On March 2, 1657/8 “Lieut. Ellis, Stephen Winge and Thomas Butler, being summoned to answer for tumultuous carriage as aforesaid, [at a Quaker meeting] being examined, and not found so faulty as was supposed, were admonished and cleared.”  He was fined many times for refusal to take the oath of Fidelity because Quakers believed it a sin to take any oath. 

Descendants of the Wing family have lived in this house until 1942 when it was sold to the Wing Family of America (the family association) as a museum house.  Unfortunately, the tours run from June through September, so we missed seeing the inside of the house.  During the rest of the year the house is available by appointment to members of the Wing association.

 There have been several archaeological digs at the site of the Wing Fort House.  Most recently was an archaeological dig at this house in 2010 that revealed a small addition to the north side (a possible milk house?) and many 17^th, 18^th and 19^th century artifacts.  See the link below for a report on what was found. 

WING FORT HOUSE

HAS BEEN PLACED ON THE

NATIONAL REGISTER OF

HISTORIC PLACES IN 1976

BY THE UNITED STATES

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

WILLIAM G. POMEROY FOUNDATION 2019     239

STEPHEN WING

SON OF THE REV. JOHN AND DEBORAH

WING, CAME TO BOSTON IN 1632

WITH HIS MOTHER AND BROTHERS

JOHN, DANIEL, AND MATHEW, WITH

WHOM HE SETTLED IN SANDWICH IN 1637.

HE LIVED UPON THIS LAND AND BUILT

THIS HOUSE IN 1641.  HE WAS AN ORGINAL

MEMBER OF THE FIRST FRIENDS MEETING

IN AMERICA, ESTABLISHED AT SPRING

HILL IN 1658, AND SUFFERED GREAT

PERSECUTION AT THE HANDS OF THE

PLYMOUTH GOVERNMENT IN THE CAUSE

OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.  HE DIED IN

1710 AND LIES BURIED AT SPRING

HILL.

ERECTED IN 1910 BY THE WING

FAMILY OF AMERICA INCORPORATED.

For the truly curious:

The Wing Family of America website:    https://www.wingfamily.org/ 

“Tour the Wing Fort House from Your Own Home with Caretaker, Dave Wheelock”  (two parts)  via YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zp8afIPBFk 

Click here to see the reports on the 2010 archaeological dig (report and artifacts)  http://www.plymoutharch.com/wing-fort-house-excavations/  

“Mystery of Missing Family Members Still Unsolved After Archaeological Dig”, The Sandwich Enterprise, July 28, 2017,  https://www.capenews.net/sandwich/news/mystery-of-missing-family-members-still-unsolved-after-archaeological-dig/article_4a4bd723-40c8-5427-ae4e-a539e03fdab6.html 

A slide show of a visit to the Wing Fort House (no narration or captions):  https://vimeo.com/28244835 

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To Cite/Link to this post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, “The Wing Fort House, East Sandwich, Massachusetts”, Nutfield Genealogy, posted September 7, 2021, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-wing-fort-house-sandwich.html: accessed [access date]).