Wing Fort House

The Wing Fort House is situated on a narrow country lane near the Cape Cod Bay in Sandwich. The surrounding land is open and fairly flat, with marshes behind the house leading out to the dunes on the beach. The setting around the house has prob- ably not changed very much since the house was built; because of the marshes there has not been any modern development within sight of the building. The house itself is two stories high, four bays wide, and has a center chimey. The exterior walls and the roof are shingled, and the windows all have 12/12 sash. The main door is located in the second bay from the left and another door leads into the main part of the house from a low one story shed off the west gable end.

The building was originally a one and a half story, one over one room so-called "fort", built shortly before 1641. The size of the original structure was more than doubled with the addition of another one over one house, moved to the site and joined to the original building. According to Abbott Lowel1 Cummings, this most likely occurred in the mid-eighteenth century, although the moved building was probably constructed c. 1700. When the houses were joined, each lost its original chimney and a new one, of irregular shape to accommodate the di fferent dimensions of the two solve the problem of the different depths of the buildings, and a new roof was con- structed over both the houses.

The new paneling in the Old Fort Room, instead of replacing the seventeenth century vertical paneling, was built out a few inches over the older wall surface.

/ARCHITECT The Wing Fort House, which incorporates one of the oldest structures extant in New England, is a significant architectural and historic landmark on Cape Cod. The house gains additional significance from the fact that it has been owned by the same family since 1641, and as such presents an accurate record of how succeeding generations of a New England family lived. The first members of the Wing family to come to the new world were Deborah Wing and her four sons, who came to Boston in 1632. Deborah's husband, the Reverend John Wing, Em 12 to had been a prominent clergyman in London but had fled to Germany and then to Holland when he disagreed with the teachings of the Church of England.

After he died his 80n don widow and four sons moved to Boston to seek what they thought would be an atmosphere of religious freedom, and settled in Saugus. In 1637 Deborah and her sons John, David and Stephen moved to Sandwich with the "ten men of Saugus" who had received a grant from the Crown to the section of Cape Cod which lay south of the Plymouth Colony. Stephen, carrying on his father's dissenting beliefs, became a founding member of the first Friends Meeting in America which was established in Spring Hill in 1658. He suffered great persecution at. the hands of the Plymouth, government because of his beliefs, but was nevertheless a respected citizen of Sandwich. Stephen was the Wing who, in 1641, bought the original one room fort which is still incorporated in the present house.

The house has remained in the possession of the Wing family since that date.