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Sandwich was the first town to be settled on Cape Cod, with its borders adjacent to Plymouth, on lands recently purchased from Native Americans. Sixty families moved here, coming mainly from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the north, from a plantation there called Saugus, later named Lynn. The ten original founders of Sandwich in 1637 became known as the "Ten Men from Saugus," but later generations here had to be told over and over what these ten costumed figures in our parades represented, and the question may still be raised today. The early themes of the town are attractive: religious tolerance and early acceptance of Quaker visitors founding a continuing meeting of Quakers here in 1658, possibly the earliest in North America; also a long commitment here by generations of Bournes and Tuppers to educate and help Native American neighbors resulting in the formation of Mashpee and Herring Pond Reservations. Sandwich became the home from which many American families, including the Wings, Nyes, Tuppers, Bournes, Swifts, Perrys, Gibbs and Burgesses, spread out in each generation to join the American mainstream, and to which their descendants now look to find the original sites, burial grounds and town records.
The legacy of the past endures in the Sandwich Glass Museum, Heritage Plantation and The Thornton Burgess Museum. Natural beauty is manifest, enhanced by an aura of sea, salt air and moderate clime.
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