Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School students, and Michael Farber, establish The Cornerstone Project

L to R: Morse Payne, Joey Benedict, Paul Niles, 

Daniel Brogan, Henry Von Thaden, Daniella Garran, Michael Farber

Two teachers, a group of Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School students, and their outside adviser, Michael Farber, have established The Cornerstone Project in 2008, working off a 1985 theory by retired architect and historian H. Morse Payne.

Payne surmised that around 1630, the Pilgrims set the original cornerstones for the first four towns, Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth and Nauset, dividing the region according to the English pie-shaped surveying methods.
To survey the towns, the Pilgrims would have established a central point in the bay, using an east-west line from Wellfleet to Manomet in Plymouth, and a north-south line set along the magnetic north.


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