Front Cover

A Guide to Monuments, 

Memorials and

Burying Grounds

In Wellfleet 

Massachusetts

Introduction

In the beginning, Billingsgate was a collection of several villages on the lower Cape between Eastham and Provincetown.  Small settlements with a meeting house, a burial ground and often a school, grew up where fishing and farming were possible: on Bound Brook Island, near Gull Pond, around Duck Creek, and in South Wellfleet.  In 1763 inhabitants in these scattered European enclaves petitioned for independence from Eastham and incorporated themselves as the Town of Wellfleet.

In the two and half centuries since, local historians have recorded much about their Town.  Among the liveliest of these memoirs are Wellfleet, A Pictorial History, by Judy Stetson, first published in 1963 by the Wellfleet Historical Society and reissued in 2004 with additional chapters by Seth Rolbein; Wellfleet Remembered by Ruth Rickmers, 1993; and also Wellfleet Echoes, 1973 and More Wellfleet Echoes, 1978, by Earle Rich.

We on the Historical Commission hope this Guide, with annotated maps, will help our visitors and our neighbors locate surviving Monuments and Memorials that mark significant sites in our town that is still, to quote Thoreau's Cape Cod,  "east of America."

Title Page

A Guide to Monuments,

Memorials and

Burying Grounds

In Wellfleet, Massachusetts

compiled by members of the

Wellfleet Historical Commission

and published with the help of the

Wellfleet Historical Society

The Town seal shows the Pilgrims in the Mayflower's

shallop rowing into Wellfleet harbor where early

chronicle reports they startled "a group of native

cutting up blackfish on the shore."

Wellfleet Town Center

Town Hall Area

1. Wellfleet Harbor Plaque
2. Town Hall and Lost Peace Angel Sculpture
3. Town Hall Flagpole
4. Mile Markers
5. WCTU Water Fountain
6. Time Capsules
7. Wellfleet Cannon
8. World War II Honor Roll
9. Captain L. D. Baker Plaque

Main Street Area

10. John R. McKay Square
11. Officer Williams Plaque
12. Our Lady of Lourdes Church Doors
13. Lawrence Gardinier Square

[ 1 ] Wellfleet Harbor Plaque

This bronze marker, now on a boulder at entrance to Town Hall Parking lot, was presented to the Town of Wellfleet by the Provincetown Tercentenary Committee in 1920. It was originally mounted on Colonial Hall, the Second Congregational Meeting House bought by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1913, and moved here in 1914 from its original site in the South Wellfleet burial ground.   Moved again across the parking lot in 1919 to house Town Offices, it was destroyed by fire during a blizzard in 1961. Rebuilt from original 1833 plans, it was enlarged and an elevator added in 1997.

South Wellfleet Congregational Meeting House, 1833,

from Bronze Plaque in South Wellfleet Cemetery

South Wellfleet Congregational Meeting House

Shown in this photograph taken about 1914, are Abbott Paine and

friends on fence in front of the then abandoned Meeting House

[ 2 ] Town Hall and Lost Peace Angel Sculpture

To celebrate the end of World War II, sculptor and long time Wellfleet Summer resident, Xavier Gonzalez created PEACE ANGEL and presented her to the Town in 1958. She was twelve feet long, fashioned from sheet aluminum which sadly melted in the 1960 fire that destroyed Town Hall.  A small cut paper model, from which this drawing was made, is preserved at the Wellfleet Historical Society Museum on Main Street.

[ 3 ] Town Hall Flagpole

The original flagpole was the mainmast salvaged from the vessel Quannapowitt, wrecked on the backshore in 1913.