Sandwich Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends) Records

Background on Sandwich Monthly Meeting

Sandwich Monthly Meeting is the oldest continuously organized Quaker meeting in North America. The first meetings for worship at Sandwich were held in 1657 under the preaching of Nicholas Upsall, Christopher Holder, and John Copeland, the latter two of whom had been exiled from Puritan Massachusetts Bay colony, having been beaten for their efforts in introducing Quakerism to New England.

Represented at the first Yearly Meeting of Friends in North America, held in Newport in 1661, Sandwich recorded its first minutes in 1672, reporting that they had thatched the meetinghouse roof. The subsequent growth of the meeting necessitated expansion of the meetinghouse in 1674 and construction of a second meetinghouse thirty years later, which was itself improved and expanded in 1709 and 1757. Today, three meetinghouses remain: in South Yarmouth (built 1809), Sandwich (1810), and West Falmouth (1842).

The tensions that wracked New England Quakerism during the nineteenth century had a strong impact on Sandwich. As early as 1778, the meeting experienced a separation when Timothy Davis of Rochester, Mass., was read out for urging his fellow Quakers to pay taxes willingly to the Continental Congress, tacitly lending aid to the revolutionary war effort. Davis and a handful of other "Free Quakers" formed a pro-Revolutionary "Davisite" splinter meeting, and although Davis recanted and petitioned for reunion with Sandwich, the Davisites appear to have met separately through at least 1815.

Sandwich survived the turmoil of early nineteenth century Quakerism in relatively good order. The Hicksite separation of 1829 that had a profound impact on other American meetings had little impact on Sandwich, and during the Wilburite separation in 1845, Sandwich remained intact, aligned with the evangelically-influenced Gurneyite ("large body") faction. Members of the meeting at West Falmouth transitioned to programed meetings in the last decade of the nineteenth century and introduced an organ into the meetinghouse shortly thereafter. South Yarmouth, in contrast, remained unprogrammed, although it was reduced to holding only sporadic summer meetings by 1909.

Following reunification of the Gurneyite and Wilburite factions throughout New England in 1945, the fortunes of Sandwich and its constituent meetings brightened. South Yarmouth was reactivated in 1954, and West Falmouth became a year-round meeting a decade later. As of the 2019, Sandwich Monthly consisted of three Preparative Meetings (West Falmouth, East Sandwich, and Yarmouth) plus a Lower Cape Worship group.

Initially overseen by New England Yearly Meeting from 1672, Sandwich Monthly has been part of Sandwich Quarterly Meeting since 1705, the year that quarterly meetings were first established.