Background on North Sandwich Monthly Meeting
Abbie Loring in Cape Cod Quaker attire, ca.1930.
Photo by Alton H. Blackington
Quaker worship began in Sandwich, New Hampshire, in 1783 when a group of Friends settled there to avoid signing the pledge to support the American Revolution. Under the care of Dover Monthly Meeting, the settlement grew sufficiently that it was set off in 1802 as the Sandwich Monthly Meeting.
The first meetinghouse in Sandwich was erected south of Center Sandwich in 1804 and later moved to nearby Tamworth; its second was burned down in 1863 in retaliation for the Quakers' antislavery and antiwar views. Active as early as 1802, a worship group in North Sandwich built their own meetinghouse in 1814. With the decline of Quakerism in the region during the mid- and late-nineteenth century, only three members were left in Center Sandwich by the 1880s, leading to the dissolution of that meeting in 1884. In the north, however, the meeting was saved by the arrival of new settlers in the 1870s. North Sandwich turned to programmed meetings and shortly after the turn of the century, hired a paid pastor. The meeting remained under pastoral until it gradually reverted to unprogrammed worship in the 1980s.
North Sandwich Monthly has been part of Salem Quarterly Meeting (1802-1815), Dover Quarter (1815-1888), Parsonfield Quarter (1888-1938), and Falmouth Quarter (1938-present). Although it is a small meeting in a very rural region, it has overseen several worship groups over the years.
- Center Sandwich Worship group, 1982-1985
- Sandwich North Worship group, 1802-14, 1884-present
- Sandwich North Preparative meeting, 1814-1884
- Sandwich South (or Center) Preparative meeting, 1802-1884
- Sandwich East (Southeast) Worship group, 1821-1827
- Wolfboro Worship group, b.1805-1814, 1851-b.1869
- Wolfboro Preparative meeting, 1814-1851
