The Tupper House

Some readers may not know that the names of the ten families who were the principal founders of Sandwich in 1637 are forever memorialized on street signs in the Town Neck area.

Thomas Tupper and his family are one of them. The street in Town Neck is, not suprisingly, named Tupper Avenue. Thomas was the oldest first settler, born in 1578, He lived a long life--98 years--dying in 1676.

Yes, there is a Tupper Avenue and a Tupper Road in Sandwich, both named after the Tupper family.

The late Sandwich historian Russell A. Lovell contended that Thomas Tupper’s first home was located in what is now Jarvesville, near where the town docks once stood by the old glass works, at the end of Jarves Street.

According to the town's first home inventory, taken in 1667, it appears that Thomas Tupper had moved from his first home into an existing house on what was once called Franklin Street, now known as Tupper Road. That house, still referred to as the Tupper House, no longer stands.

Who built it originally? We do not know. And why did they leave such a fine structure?

Thomas Tupper's second house, once located at 15 Tupper Road.

After Russell Ellis Tupper died in 1904--the last Tupper to occupy the ancient Saltbox--the family formed a historical association and bought back the home in 1916, which had briefly passed out of family hands.

The Town supported efforts to honor this first family by renaming Franklin Street to Tupper Road in 1917. Sadly, the home was destroyed by arson in April of 1921, just when the Tupper Family Association was beginning restorations.

The family association placed the first boulder and plaque at the corner of Main Street and Tupper Road in 1939.

Memorial Boulder honoring Thomas Tupper located at the corners of main Street and Tupper Road, Sandwich, MA.

In 1959 the Town took a bigger step to memorialize this founding family by granting a five-acre park further north on Tupper Road.

Tupper Family Memorial Public Park located at 15 Tupper Road, Sandwich, MA, where the house once stood.

Thomas Tupper had only two surviving children. His daughter Katherine married Benjamin Nye, who had a grist mill on what is now Old County Road, in 1640. Thomas' son, Thomas Jr., lived at what is now Town Neck. He was most active in town affairs and maintained friendly relations with the indigenous people. He married Martha Mayhew, a surname usually associated with Martha’s Vineyard.

Thomas Senior outlived all but his last wife, who followed him just a few months later in 1676. She was Anne Hodgson, whom he married in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in December 1634.

A Tupper descendent, Eleanor Tupper, PhD, wrote the family genealogy and published it in 1972.  We do not find any members of the Tupper family in Sandwich today.

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Kaethe Maguire is a member of the Friends of the Sandwich Town Archives, a dedicated, all-volunteer, 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to supporting and promoting the archives’ collections and the rich, diverse history of the town of Sandwich.