West Barnstable, Massachusetts

West Barnstable is a seaside village in the northwest part of the town of Barnstable, Massachusetts. Once devoted to agricultural pursuits, West Barnstable now is largely residential and historic.Natural featuresThese 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.Notable peopleRemarkably, in the 18th century, the village produced four nationally prominent leaders at a time when there were no more than 500 inhabitants. James Otis 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, 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. She is a member of the Women's Hall of Fame.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. In late 1844 he saved and restored the U.S. frigate Constitution and then sailed her around the world, the venerable ship's only circumnavigation.