Sandwich has celebrated historic birthdays so often you’d think we’d be short on candles. For at least a century and a half, big civic parties have marked the births of the town, the county and the nation. But like an Olympic torch passed from runner to runner till it reaches the cauldron, each generation picks up the flame where the last one left off. We’re about to take on that collective challenge again as the town participates in the 250th birthday party of the United Sta

The creators of Sandwich's Centennial Box didn't have an instruction manual in 1876 when they launched one of America's first time capsules on a 100-year voyage. Their wood-and-tin box looks as crude to us as the Mayflower or a Mercury spacecraft. But like those other pioneering voyagers, it delivered the goods. On July 4, 1976, the 200th birthday of the United States, town leaders opened the lid and fulfilled the 19th century community's wish to link generations. In this sec

When Russell A. Lovell Jr. first saw the contents of the newly opened Sandwich time capsule on July 4, 1976, he berated its chief packer, Charles C.P. Waterman. Then the Sandwich historian spent the rest of the year studying, displaying and writing about Waterman's century-old selections. The more Lovell looked into the Centennial Box, the more he saw. Though he still had complaints, Lovell's Dec. 30 wrap-up article in the Village Broadsider newspaper included this phrase: "M

After my husband and I moved to Sandwich in 2020 I found myself with time on my hands. It was the height of the pandemic and, like everyone else, we were in lockdown. So I turned to one of my newer interests: genealogy. I decided to dig into my father’s side of the family. My dad grew up in the Newton area, the younger half-brother to three much older siblings. My impression is that school wasn’t exactly his thing (the story goes that he was invited to three different class r

While attending Salem State University for my undergraduate degree in public history, I was fortunate to secure an internship in the archives of Salem Maritime National Historic Site, the nation’s oldest national historic site. One of my key tasks was digitizing and identifying their image collection, which includes thousands of photographs, slides and postcards. I spent countless hours online toggling between Historic Aerials and Google Street View, painstakingly shifting my

Shortly after I began volunteering at the Sandwich Town Archives, it acquired a collection of photographs and documents relating to a...

Sandwich of the late 1940s — World War II was over, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany vanquished, the population of around 2,400 people was...

On July 4, 1976, Americans put on a 200 th birthday show for the world. Millions saw the tall ships enter New York Harbor amid a blast...