2022 Sandwich Chamber Guidebook Web Version FINAL - Flipbook - Page 10
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s a n d w i c h c h a m b e r . c o m
We just might surprise you!
Ella Ellis Holway played a significant role in the preservation of Sandwich. Born in 1861 to
Wanton Ellery Ellis and Sarah Priscilla Story, she married Jerome Holway a direct descendant of one of Sandwich’s earliest settlers, Joseph Holway on September 30, 1886.
Having trained at Lasell University, class of 1881, Ella was a local schoolteacher and mother
of four children. In her free time Ella researched and wrote extensively about historic homes
in Sandwich. In 1907 she founded the Sandwich Historical Society, the holding company
for the Sandwich Glass Museum today.
Perhaps her greatest gift to Sandwich was the charting and recording of all the burial stones
in the Old Town Burial Ground. Ella died at the age of 56 in 1915.
Most newcomers to Sandwich think that we probably were always a farming community
and not much of a business center. Well, that is not true. Upper Shawme Pond, often called
Shawme Lake, was the site of various businesses.
Before the Industrial Revolution, to manufacture anything, you had to have a source of
power from a natural source like water. On the upper mill dam of Shawme Lake, Samuel
Wing had a cotton and wool yarn factory. This eventually became the Sandwich Tack factory
owned by Jones and Heald. Closer to the village, the Bay State Tack Company created a
plant at Willow Street in 1880. When the original Tack factory of Heald and Jones burned,
they took over the Willow Street factory.