Sandwich, herself, was in the big industry bracket. Indeed, the
products of the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company have given the
community national fame, and this fame lives on today. Sandwich
glass, by virtue of design and distinctive colorings, is prized by
collectors all over the country. Here the largest glass-works in the
country flourished in 1850, with 500 master-craftsmen and a weekly
output of 100,000 pounds. There is the legend that the first skilled
glass blowers were from England and were smuggled into this country in
barrels at a time when they were forbidden to enter this country. The
famous plant is in ruins now. It closed down after a strike in 1888,
though, at that time, machine-made glassware, turned out in Pittsburgh
and Chicago, was entering into competition with the wares fashioned by
the original Sandwich artificers.
Humor and curious laws and prejudices lighten the pages of Sandwich
history. A story that always gets a chuckle is that of “Seth the
Peddler” who, in 1669, was ordered out of town “lest he might become
a public charge.” Seth Pope shook the dust of Sandwich, but before he
left he announced he would be back and he would “buy up the town.”
Which is exactly what he did. Thirty years after making his bitter
departure, Seth, no longer the humble peddler, strode back into
Sandwich and proceeded to purchase nearly all the land in the town. He
built two houses and gave one each to his sons, Seth and John. Then
Seth Pope left Sandwich for good after letting it be generally known
“he would not live in the damn town.”
And, romancing was decidedly different in those olden days of Sandwich.
Richard Bourne, minister to the Mashpee Indians, lost his wife,
Bathsheba. Not long after, he wrote to a widow who was to be his second
wife: “I have had divers motions since I received yours, but none
suits me but yourself, if God soe incline your myndie to marry me ...
I doe not find in myselfe any flexableness to any other but an utter
loatheness.”