Origin of Winthrop Town Seal



The Town Seal shown in the center of the above pictures was established in 1852 and is currently used on all town documents and can be seen on most town vehicles. The sailboat shows our pride in being a seacoast town, the plowshare denotes the clear recognition of our early roots as a community of farms and the depiction of the First Church along with the First Schoolhouse represents two of the fundamental principles upon which Winthrop was founded, a belief in God and a good education for our children. Having said that, the question has been raised as to whether the drawings of the buildings are truly of the first church and first schoolhouse in town. The fact that the ribbon above the two buildings labels them as such should probably be sufficient. One can readily see that the drawing of the building to the left, which stood across the street from the current Kirby Funeral Home parking lot, does in fact look very much like the one labeled as the First Church with two doors and two windows on the front. We have been told that the reason for the two doors was to provide separate entrances for the men and women. The curved window shown on the drawing did in fact exist even though missing from the seal. The frame for this window, along with one of the ends of a pew from this church, can be seen at the barn of the Deane Winthrop House. As to the schoolhouse, the drawing shown to the right of the seal was first printed in an 1895 publication and reflects information from Lucius Floyd who was born in 1834 in the Deane Winthrop house. As a boy he attended this school which was then located on the site of the present Police Station. Lucius stated that it had “seats and desks made of 2 inch pine planks that ran the whole length of the schoolhouse so that the scholars were obliged to crawl over one another to get to their places”. When the seal was designed, the artist no doubt took some liberties to ensure that both buildings would fit within its confines.