[1] These include six-mile long Sandy Neck Barrier Beach which protects the extensive Great Marshes, the latter a source of salt hay that attracted the first English settlers to the area in the mid-17th century.

James Otis[2] the Patriot was the original intellectual leader of the revolutionary movement in Boston in the years leading up to the War of Independence.

His sister, Mercy Otis Warren,[3] also born next to the Great Marshes, became a political activist, one of the first women writers in the country, and a historian of note.

Lemuel Shaw, another native of the village, held the important post of chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1830 to 1860 and earned the reputation of a leading jurist in the nation's formative constitutional history.

The fourth native, Captain John "Mad Jack" Percival, rose to the highest rank in the U.S. Navy, serving in four wars.