When Governor Benning Wentworth granted a charter for Sandwich on October 25, 1763, he named the town after his friend John Montague, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich. The following April, the town’s proprietors met at Samuel Folsom’s house in Exeter and hired Orlando Weed of Gilmanton to be their settling agent at a cost of 700 acres, 70 English pounds, and seven cows.

Eleven months later, Orlando Weed brought a group of settlers from Exeter through Gilmanton, across Lake Winnipesaukee to Moultonborough, and finally down a blazed trail through the dense forests of Sandwich. They settled in the Lower Corner where Orlando Weed’s son Henry built a mill on Potash Pond (Little Pond).

By the 1830s, Sandwich had a population of 2,744, and the only state towns larger were Portsmouth, Exeter, Dover, Concord, Londonderry, Sommersworth, Gilmanton, and Barrington. Sandwich had mills, stores, blacksmiths, craftsmen and artisans, schools, churches, a doctor and lawyer, and one of the state’s most prosperous commercial bases.