Barnstable Historical Society

08/07/2026

Please note: the Old Jail will be closed this weekend (August 8-9)

07/20/2026

Interesting Barnstable Civil War character:

You're Really From the Town of Barnstable if you remember... Arts Barnstable The Barnstable Comedy Club Barnstable Land Trust Barnstable Recreation Barnstable375 Town of Barnstable Barnstable Village Association

By Jeffrey D. Crocker Wartime often produces great stories of courage and heroism. This is not one of them. The year was 1864, the third year of the American Civil War. The previous year, Congress had passed — and President Abraham Lincoln had signed — the unpopular Enrollment Act, requiring men...

05/12/2026

Check out the making of "white gold" in Barnstable, and the reason why we have cannons in front of our Court House!

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Salt-making on Cape Cod, including in Barnstable village, has a very long history. Historian Amos Otis reports in his Genealogical Notes of Barnstable families that: A salt work was erected in Barnstable very early, on the point of land on the west of the entrance of Rendezvous Creek, still known as...

05/07/2026

Hinckley Pond Ice House & Gustavus Swift, a Pioneer of Refrigeration >

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It is almost impossible today to contemplate life without refrigeration. However, almost within living memory that was a reality. Before refrigeration, Cape Codders harvested ice from ponds and stored it in icehouses and then ice boxes in their houses. One such pond was Hinckley’s Pond in Barnstab...

05/07/2026

Did you know that by 1865 more than 1000 acres of cranberry bogs had been established in Barnstable County?

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The landscape of Cape Cod was created in large part by the glaciers of many thousands of years ago. Some of the small ponds that were left behind evolved into cranberry bogs. Native Americans harvested wild cranberries and used them for food, medicine and as a fabric dye. European settlers then cult...

05/07/2026

Old Stone Walls of Barnstable >

The old stone walls all around us on Cape Cod are part of the fabric of the land, and the history of the people who used to live here:

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On Cape Cod we are surrounded by endless stretches of old stone walls that mark property lines, fields, and thoroughfares. Those stones are a legacy from the glaciers that retreated North many thousands of years ago. As the ice melted, stones from small pebbles to massive boulders were left scattere...